4 Anxiety over Elections’ Outcome

Mar 04, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

There is much anxiety over the outcome of the elections. Voters, the nation, want an immediate, prompt declaration. That is not possible.
It is not a constituency system where partial results can be declared — meaning for the constituency. The entire country is a constituency. Voters have to wait for the returns of all the 2,300 voting stations. They have to be aggregated for each party. Given the vastness of the country and lack of efficient transportation, it is a time consuming process. It would take days to get the statements of polls in Georgetown. Hence the lengthy amount of time to report and declare the election results. On this note, Dr. Steve Surujbally cannot be blamed for taking days to declare the results in 2006, 2011, and 2016. He was unfairly attacked. Of course, the major parties would have known from their SOPs their undeclared unofficial tallies. These should not vary from the official tallies. But they would because of tampering.
The two major parties know the outcome of the elections. One party has won. Based on my calculation, one party is projected to have won some 51%, another party 48%, and the minor parties 1%. This would be a projected outcome of 34-31 seats. Can these numbers change? Anything is possible in Guyana with tampering of boxes and inputting of numbers in computer.
In an earlier article, I commented that previous elections were fraudulent. That was the view of voters, not mine. I do not think or believe and there is/was evidence to suggest that any chair of Gecom played any role in rigging. By no means did I mean to impugn the integrity and professionalism of any chair. I humbly apologize to the preceding chairs for suggesting anything out of the extraordinary in managing elections. All performed admirably well under strenuous and stressful conditions. I do not think any of them deliberately played a role in influencing the outcome. They must be applauded for their work. On the recent elections, officials must behave professionally and announce the results as obtained from the will of the electorate. The announcement of the outcome must be done expeditiously. People will remain tense until the outcome is announced.

Yours truly,
Dr. Vishnu Bisram

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