— APNU confident of retaining township

By Naomi Marshall
LINDEN experienced a low voter turnout in the second Local Government Elections held in 24 years on Monday, but many were happy casting their ballots for the first time.

“The experience was very exciting. I am very happy to know that I cast my ballot and vote for improvement. The process was easy and nice,” says first-time voter Lorrian McDonald of Block 22, Wismar, Linden.

McDonald expressed that by voting, she wishes to see infrastructural and recreational developments in her community.
“In my community, there is nothing much there, nothing at all. When you look outside is just boys smoking and they aren’t doing nothing properly for themselves,” McDonald told the Guyana Chronicle.

McDonald added that she wanted the previous municipality to do more for the community. “They probably only do about a 10 per cent of 100 per cent that they said they would have done. So I would have wanted more.”

In the search for betterment was another first-time voter, Carlet Edmonson. She wants to see more community development and creation of jobs for the youths of Linden.
According to Edmonson, the previous council did not live up to their word.
“We still get the bad road and everything. The place ain’t develop properly, we need proper development with the road,” she said.

Senior citizen Alice Samuels, however, had a different view.
“I know that they have been working assiduously for the development of the communities in which we live but we have to work together, we have to have unity, we have to have love and we have to put our acts together to change this whole community and the society in which we live. I know it could happen but we have to be united. If we are not united well then things are going to go chaos.”

Apart from this, Samuels said the voting process went smoothly.
“The process was good, they are very efficient in their work, they know what they are about,” said Samuels.
GECOM Observer Victor Frenandes said there was no indication of any “hiccups” during the voting process.

“Even those without ID cards used the process of swearing so there has been nothing unusual.”
APNU’s Constituency Seven representative, Colwyn Allen, stated that despite the low turnout, his party is confident of success.

“I must say that so far persons have been coming out; not as much as we expected but it’s still early and it’s too close to call and I’m quite certain because of the mobilisation, the strength that we have, we are quite confident that we will be successful.”

Another APNU representative Deron Adams said he is not happy with the turnout as his party was encouraging people to get involved in the election.

“Our youths account for a great percentage of the voting population, they were not represented here today because it’s either they don’t understand the importance as yet or they are just disgruntled as to how things have been going,” Adams highlighted.
Adams also commended GECOM for its hard work in ensuring that the elections were held successfully.