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Polling agents
Kaieteur News – Polling agents have some heavy responsibilities resting on their shoulders. Though they would have been selected by one of the six political parties, they represent more than the eyes and ears of that party. They are the eyes and ears of Guyana. Their duty is to be constantly vigilant, so that a clean and fair elections process occurs in every polling station in Guyana identified by GECOM. In what gives every indication of being the most consequential elections in Guyana’s history, polling agents represent a type of dependable first responder. They must be, so that there’s a polling day and polling activity driven by what is fair and what dispels chronic doubt.
The disputes from the ugly 2020 elections have never been fully resolved, with all Guyanese paying a price, struggling to recover in the five years since. The claims and contentions about ballots boxes tampered with, improper voting practices, and dubious actions at some polling stations, among other positions, have still not settled. The general sentiment is not of who got caught in their efforts at barefaced rigging, but who rigged more skillfully and broadly, and who still got away scotch free with their polling day skullduggeries. Considering that there is such an agitating context still in existence, it is imperative that all polling agents perform their functions to the best of their abilities, and in keeping with the training that they received from GECOM.
One of the more troubling issues from the 2020 elections that refuse to die a quiet death has to do with laments from the losers that huge sums of money was spent by the winning party to influence the readiness and alertness of their own handpicked polling agents. There were reports of polling agents turning up late to the assigned stations, on that one day of all days, when so much was at stake. Some polling agents were not properly equipped or supplied (sustenance and communication with their supervisors), and those lapses in preparation and the delivery of resources contributed to the results of the 2020 elections that are still the subject of pained disagreement to this day. When the polling agents of a political party, any party, are left stranded in such a weak position, then they are vulnerable to all manner of temptation and exploitation. The eyes and ears that are necessary to ensure a clean and fair elections process from start to finish come under the severest stresses. When all voters, whether winners or losers, should be able to shake their heads affirmatively and support as an ethical electoral process cannot do so, then credibility hemorrhages.
One of the more contentious positions that emerged from the keenly contested, razor’s edge, 2020 elections was the bribing of polling agents attached to the now opposition parties. We at this paper think that, as unacceptable as bribing may be, the political parties that suffered from such betrayals and abandonment only have themselves to blame. It is either they had the wrong polling agents from the start, or that the agents themselves came out with the best of intentions to be for their party, but succumbed to the financial overtures, and other incentives, that may have been dangled. Politics may be a noble profession when conducted with the highest degree of principles. But it can also be among the dirtiest games played by man, when the outcome hangs in the balance. Often, a financial windfall to the watchers is what makes the difference between seeing and knowing and objecting, as their early first reaction; or pretending at ignorance and saying nothing, as the other.
In such circumstances, every Guyanese voter hoping for a fair and trusted outcome is disappointed. They find themselves fastened to more than the same place that trapped this entire country in the 2020 elections. Again, all Guyanese are victimized, as if they never rose higher, never moved past the passions and differences of the 1960s and since. Polling agents are part of the first line of defence in the elections process. They must be alert and not slothful, principled and not dabble in the dangerous. These elections mean too much for all Guyanese, with the best demanded of all polling agents.
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