GECOM must post SOPs as soon as submitted from polling places

Sep 01, 2025 Letters

Dear Editor,

Congratulations to GECOM for accepting late submission of the WIN’s list of polling agents. It is important that GECOM is seen as flexible and considering the greater interest of the nation that all competing parties have polling agents to witness the voting. This helps with the overall credibility of the elections.

The Opposition parties are looking for any little thing to attack GECOM and spread false narratives that GECOM is not fair and independent. The PNC which has always rigged election whenever it is in power, knows it will do badly given the hemorrhage of its MPs and many of its supporters crossing over to the PPP. Instead of the party admitting that there is poor leadership, they will look to blame GECOM as favouring the ruling party.

Two parties say they will not accept the results. Especially if they are badly beaten by the PPP, they will not want to accept the results and will want to incite trouble. The truth is elections cannot be rigged anymore now that the counting of votes is done at the voting stations and the SOPs (Statements of Poll) showing how people voted at each voting station are posted outside of the voting station at the end of voting and after the votes are counted in the presence of all party agents at each voting station. In 2020, the PNC’s attempted rigging failed because the SOPs showed their announced numbers did not match the SOPs. So, there was an attempt to rig through the false counting. After many court cases file to delay the PNC’s demitting office.

We have to trust that the PNC Commissioners on GECOM will not disappear so as to delay the declaration of results. In an election, there will be some clerical errors, election papers not being put properly in the right envelopes, a vote is placed or misfiled. But these piddly errors do not rise to the level of rigging or malfeasance, but these are the things Opposition parties will invoke to cast aspersions on GECOM. Our elections have always been fraught with conflicts and tension until the results are verified and declared officially. However, to reduce the people’s anxiety and tension, GECOM must post every SOP as soon as that count is completed. The voters cannot wait for the recount and long, drawn out verification process. So GECOM, go ahead and post the results as soon as you receive them. The people would like that.

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GECOM must post SOPs as soon as submitted from polling places

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