…says ready to deliver clean LGEs

WITH just 12 days to go, the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) says it is ahead of schedule and fully prepared to efficiently conduct Local Government Elections (LGEs) 2018 and its Chief Elections Officer, Keith Lowenfield said when it comes to the counting of ballots and declaration of results, this will not go beyond November 13, 2018.
Explaining his position further, he added: “I envisage that results will be declared in each of these 80 Local Authority Areas as early as practicable. The largest municipality we have to cover remains Georgetown. There are others where we barely have six polling stations [that is why] I don’t envisage that is going to take an inordinately long time to be counted.”

There are currently 1,674 polling stations countrywide while some 272 are likely to be private residents which GECOM is now moving to confirm.

Ready for LGEs
Meanwhile, GECOM said it has successfully trained some 10,700 polling staff who will oversee the smooth functioning of the process. “I’m happy to report that the commission is on schedule for the efficient conduct of Local Government Elections 2018 on the 12th of November without any chaos or confusion as is being reported in some sections of the media,” Public Relations Officer (PRO) Yolanda Ward stated on Monday at a press briefing.
Lowenfield said that the ballots procured from the Canadian Bank Note Company have arrived on schedule and are presently being secured by the Guyana Police Force (GPF). Regarding the trained polling officers Lowenfield said: “We’ll be employing them definitively from November 2, 2018 to facilitate mock polls and their own integration as members of polling stations across the spectrum. So, we’re on the way to delivering an efficient election.”

Deputy Chief Election Officer (DCEO) Roxanne Prince-Myers added: “As the CEO said, we are appointing our polling day staff so we are well ahead of our schedule in terms of preparing for Local Government Elections.”

Prince-Myers reminded that the period for application of proxy is open and will close on November 2, 2018. “Right now our returning officers are issuing application forms for proxy. This means that there are some categories of people who are not able to be voting on Election Day so they can have proxy, a person who would vote in their stead,” she explained.

Addressing some of the criteria, Prince-Myers said that both the proxy and the person unable to vote must be living within the same constituency and listed at the same polling station.

When applications are sent in they will be investigated by returning officers and by November 8, 2018 appointments will be issued to applications approved.
Also at the news conference, Ward took the opportunity to make a public appeal to persons who have conducted transactions for identification cards, whether for new cards or replacements, to uplift them.

“As, you know, an ID card is a very essential component for the voting population and so what we have at the moment is a number of persons who have conducted various registrations…but they have not yet uplifted their IDs from our offices. We are urging those persons to ensure that over the next few days you visit the registration office where you would have conducted that particular transaction and to ensure that those ID cards are uplifted,” she said.

Education programme
The PRO also updated that GECOM has commenced sensitisation regarding education awareness on the voting process which includes the dissemination of printed materials.
“We have disseminated a number of printed materials through the returning officers in their respective Local Authority Areas and so they have been conducting their own education awareness on the ground using some of these materials,” Ward said. However, she noted that there is still more work to do in this regard.

Meanwhile, notice of polls will be made public to all electors at least 10 days before the elections.