GECOM Chair to invite other observers for recount

Apr 27, 2020 News

The Chair of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh, SC, is expected to invite observers, both domestic and international, to witness the national recount that is scheduled to start this week.

Commissioner Sase Gunraj

Before now, the Chair was only reported to have been in contact with CARICOM.
But CARICOM’s role will not be that of a regular observer. CARICOM is expected to prepare a report on the process of the recount to give validity to the count.
GECOM is expected to consider CARICOM’s report at the level of the Commission, alongside the report of the Chief Elections Officer on the results of the count. Commissioners have described this role as that of a scrutineer. As for the regular observers, a motion was moved on Friday by Commissioner Sase Gunraj for GECOM to invite observers for the recount, and that motion received unanimous approval.
Gunraj told Kaieteur News yesterday that it is the Chair’s role to invite the observers, but that he is unaware whether she has begun that process.
The local observers include the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI), the Private Sector Commission (PSC), Youth Challenge Guyana (YCG), and AmCham Guyana (American Chamber of Commerce). These will have no difficulty fielding missions to observe the recount, given their presence in Guyana.
However, there is still the question of whether the international observers will field physical teams.
Thus far, the Carter Centre and the Organisation of American States (OAS) observer missions have said that they are committed to observing the remainder of the electoral process. However, none of the observers has publicly stated intent to be physically present in Guyana.
CARICOM had proposed that the Chair stream the recount live for the benefit of CARICOM and the international observers who could not be physically present. This proposal was made in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The GECOM Chair has not acquiesced to the proposal, as GECOM does not anticipate CARICOM refusing to field a team.
But GECOM has not yet said whether any provisions would be made for the international observer missions.
GECOM has had cause to re-evaluate just how the observers will be facilitated at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC), given the COVID-19 pandemic. While it could have allowed each international observer team to have a representative at each of the 10 counting stations, Commissioner Vincent Alexander told reporters following a Commission meeting that this would not be so. He explained that the international observers would have to come up with a collective approach to doing their job, deciding among themselves a single person from the collective to be present at each counting station.

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