Gecom’s declaration of readiness

Mar 04, 2020 Editorial

We are ready! So said Gecom last week. As reassurances go, there is little room for failure on that promise, that commitment. The first phase of that authoritative pronouncement from the head of Gecom was delivered in fine fashion on polling day, Monday, March 2nd.
In a mainly manual and paper process, and across near and distant areas of operations and oversight, the agency responsible for national and regional elections performed outstandingly. All Guyanese should step forward to extend congratulations and commendations.
As is well known, however, that was the public, largely physical and visible stage. It was the beginning, and of which some, if not many, would claim is the easiest part of an always thorny and disturbed process. We are now in the midst of the hard part, which puts immense pressure on that “We are ready!” statement. The best evidence, the most persuasive element, of that declaration for Guyanese would be the timeliness of results. We repeat: the timeliness of results.
Given our history, it should be urgent, without the undue haste that leads to error and endless agitations. We have had enough of that already, and Monday was not immune from them, even on a day of a largely, very smoothly run exercise.
The margins of expectations are so thin, as to be inseparable, and they continue to reflect the harsh, searing divide. And this is among the many reasons that, though time is of the supreme essence, the greatest of care must characterize the process going forward. Or despite the furors on social media and countless competing claims of electoral triumph by one or the other of the two major presences.
It must be remembered that that is part of ongoing electioneering, which is still in full swing.
Gecom must go about its business with unruffled calm, in steady dignity, and with determination to serve the nation faithfully and cleanly. That is what we say here at this paper, that is our stand in this most pressing of times, when every soaring anticipation that could be imagined finds flourishing territory. It is why we step forward at this early and most sensitive hour to articulate the following. The updates and releases, the whole kit and kaboodle of the paraphernalia of results, must be crisp and clear and conclusive. They must be authoritative and final in their parts and in their sum.
Anything less would not be the required, looked for, culmination of the guaranteed readiness, but of something less. It would be that which is redolent of sloppiness and slackness. The hope is that this most sensitive and crucial of agencies at this time would rise and deliver on this second phase of our elections process.

At the present time, and for all intents and purposes, our society is already struggling to go through the motions of returning to some sense of everyday routines, such as work and school and the myriad other occupations that fill the passing hours. Those hours weigh heavily, since all eyes and all ears and all minds are focused near totally on the oracle into which Gecom is transformed during these demanding, unrelenting times. The ensemble of our physical nonchalance is an unconvincing mirage representative of the outward only. On this Wednesday, Guyana is reduced to a society tethered to tenterhooks.
Man, woman, and grown child react ceaselessly, spook readily. There are so many expectations, built on the backs of so many dreams, that it might be inhuman for matters or peoples to be otherwise. Those are components of the local contexts that continue to capture and control the outlooks, energies, and priorities of every Guyanese at this juncture in our history, this most fateful of stages in our existence.
The eligible voting public has done its part, so matters are now out of the hands of those citizens who participated actively and responsibly. All roads end at the doors of Gecom. All is in the hands of its servants and its leaders.
That spirited and confident enhancing declaration of “We are ready” now faces its most serious scrutiny, its most grueling challenges, with the most delicate of pathways to be adhered to and completed with power and authority. The proof comes in the timeliness of results: clean, convincing results.

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Gecom’s declaration of readiness

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