MEMBERS of the Disciplined Services will today cast their votes at various polling stations across Guyana, ahead of the rest of the eligible electorate which votes on March 18.Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Tamara Rodney, in an invited comment, told Guyana Chronicle that the Commission is “good to go.” Some 6978 ranks from the Guyana Police Force (GPF), the Guyana Defence Force (GDF), the Prison Service and Fire Service will be voting today at the long delayed Local Government Elections (LGE).

The ranks will be voting at 19 polling stations across the country.
“Ballot stations for the Disciplined Services Ranks are located at their places of duty or deployment. These include 19 locations for the Guyana Defence Force, 5 locations for the Guyana Prison Service, and 4 for the Guyana Police Force,” a statement from GECOM has said.

Ms Rodney told this publication that all of the logistics are in place, and the Commission has sent all the necessary ballot boxes to interior locations on Monday morning. Those ballots arrived in Guyana on March 1.

She explained that the ballots were extracted, sorted and enveloped after arriving here on March 1.

“The ballot boxes should arrive there by now; they were sent this morning,” she added. Election day staff, Rodney noted, will be on call from 3:00am, so as to ensure that final checks and balances can be done before the open of polls at 6:00am.

Each ballot sheet for members of the Disciplined Forces is placed into two envelopes. The outer envelope bears the elector’s name along with the District and Local Authority Area in which he or she is required to vote. The inner envelope bears the District, Local Authority Area and the Constituency in which he or she is required to vote, GECOM stated.

“We are all set…we are good to go,” Ms Rodney said, noting that persons who are present in the line to exercise their franchise before 6pm will be allowed to vote after 6pm. “Once persons are in the line at 6pm, the time when the polls will be closed, then they will still get a chance to vote, because they were present in the line before the official time for the close of polls,” Rodney explained.

At the close of polls, all ballot boxes will be returned to GECOM, and kept in “the secured custody of the Chief Election Officer, under guard by members of the Guyana Police Force.”

The Ballots cast by members of the Disciplined Forces will be sorted by Local Authority and Constituency, to be dispatched to the respective Returning Officers for intermixing on Election Day, slated for March 18. The polling stations identified for the intermixing of the Disciplined Forces’ ballots will be gazetted, GECOM said in a statement on Monday.
LGE, after a two-decade hiatus, will be held under a new hybrid system of Proportional Representation (PR) and the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP). This new system allows for voluntary groups, political parties and individual candidates to contest for seats in the municipalities and NDCs.

Only voluntary groups and political parties can contest in the PR aspect of the LGE. Voluntary groups and political parties can contest any or all of the seats under the Constituency component of the elections. The hybrid system is allowed under the new Local Authorities (Elections) (Amendment) Act 2009, which provides for LGE to be held in all of the seventy-one Local Authority Areas in Guyana, using the PR and FPTP systems.
Fifty percent, or half, of the number of councillors of each Local Authority Area will be elected through the Proportional Representation and component, and the other fifty percent through the FPTP component or Constituency Component.

Article 71 of the Constitution of Guyana states that local government is a vital aspect of democracy, and as such should involve as many people as possible in the tasks of managing and developing the communities in which they live. It is by virtue of Article 71 of the Constitution that 71 Local Authority Areas, comprising nine municipalities or towns and 62 Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs), have been established.

LGE was last held in Guyana in 1994.