JAGDEO

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (CMC):

The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) yesterday said that it would not be "rushed" into announcing the results of the August 28 general and regional elections.

GECOM's chairman, Dr. Steve Surujbally, told a news conference the results would only be released after "they have been verified to our satisfaction and are free of error".

"Relative to the speedy delivery of results, I would like to advise stakeholders, political parties, observers, non-government organisations, the commercial sector and the general public that GECOM will not sacrifice accuracy on the twin altars of alacrity and expediency".

He said that his staff had been well trained and had undergone several rehearsals ahead of the elections.

"They are currently in full swing, processing the Statements of Poll (SOP).

The SOPs are being marked on delivery, documented, photocopied, checked and rechecked, before they are encoded and further processed.

No mistakes

"We will only announce the results when we are absolutely certain that they have been verified to our satisfaction and are without error. Please understand that the results must not only be transparent but they must be able to withstand the harshest scrutiny, ergo they must contain no mistakes".

"Please exercise restraint and patience," he told reporters.

Electoral officials have only been able to disclose partial results for some of the 10 regions following the close of the 1,999 polling stations on Monday.

Ten political parties including the ruling People's Progressive Party Civic (PPPC), the main opposition People's National Congress Reform -One Guyana (PNCR-IG) and the newly formed Alliance for Change (AFC), contested the elections for control of the 65-member National Assembly and for the head of state.

Electoral officials said that 490,000 persons had been eligible to cast ballots in the elections, the eighth since the country attained political independence from Britain in 1966.

Earlier, Chief Elections Officer Gocool Boodoo dismissed suggestions that the results given so far by the commission were being done in a manner to give an unfair advantage to a "particular political party".

"There is no subtle intention of one party doing better than the other," he said telling reporters that the results of the polls were being given out in the order they were received for verification.

"The results are not given in any particular order".

Early results

Earlier, Surujbally had indicated that GECOM would release the results "hopefully as early as this evening or tomorrow morning" and Boodoo said that "as soon as practical, but not later than 15 days after Election Day I shall publicly declare the results of the election".

He said a notification would be published in the Official Gazette, specifying the number of votes cast for each list of candidates, the number of rejected ballot papers, the number of seats allocated to each list of candidates and the names of the persons who, as a result of the election, have become members of the National Assembly.