PPP says inclusion of observation reports during tabulation is irrelevant, time-consuming

The Opposition People’s Progressive Party on Friday continued its protest against a decision by the Guyana Election Commission (GECOM) to include and broadcast observation reports during the tabulation process of the ongoing national recount exercise.

GECOM, at the request of the APNU+AFC coalition, took a decision on Thursday to include observation reports in the tabulation process.

Those observation reports are included on the Statements of Recount (SORs) after each ballot box has been counted and processed.

PPP Member Anil Nandlall is now trying to get GECOM to increase the hours of tabulation since the party believes that the process is delayed because of the dependence on the observation reports.

The PPP agent was adamant that the observation reports has no relevance to the tabulation exercise.

He said the preparation of the observation reports were time-consuming and results in delays in the tabulation.

“My report is that he tabulation exercise is being delayed because of the dependence upon observation reports which has no relevance to tabulation exercise,” Nandlall told reporters outside the Arthur Chung Conference Center.

Nandlall said from his information, only a third of the SORs completed have been tabulated.

It was only Thursday that GECOM took a decision to have tabulation done on a daily basis for 90 minutes, trumping a previous agreement to have the tabulation done at the end of each district.

According to the order, tabulation of the Statements of Recount will be done at a central tabulation center in the presence of the CARICOM scrutinizing team, representatives of political parties, international and local observers and advisors to the Guyana Elections Commission.

The Statement of Recount is to be projected on a screen to be viewed by all persons present and the information shall be input into a matrix, which process could be viewed simultaneously by all persons present.

The entire tabulation has to be broadcast live, according to the order.

Nandlall said the big issue for the PPP remains the pace at which the recount is being conducted, noting it is undesirable.