Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

As the Guyana Elec­tions Com­mis­sion (GECOM) con­tin­ues to tal­ly votes from Mon­day’s gen­er­al elec­tion, sev­er­al me­dia out­lets are pro­ject­ing a vic­to­ry for Dr Ir­faan Ali’s Peo­ple’s Pro­gres­sive Par­ty/Civic (PPP/C), sug­gest­ing the par­ty is on course to re­tain con­trol of the coun­try.

Yes­ter­day GECOM did not re­lease any pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion. How­ev­er, it post­ed State­ments of Polls (SOPs), and the me­dia hous­es across Guyana used those fig­ures to de­ter­mine the vot­ing trends and con­duct their own analy­sis.

An SOP is a form com­plet­ed by the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer at a polling sta­tion af­ter the close of the polls and af­ter the votes have been count­ed.

It is an­tic­i­pat­ed that GECOM will re­lease the re­sults of the elec­tion ei­ther to­day or to­mor­row. Ini­tial­ly, it did com­mit to re­veal­ing the re­sults on Sep­tem­ber 4.

PPP/C leader Dr Ir­faan Ali, who is the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, yes­ter­day urged his sup­port­ers to cel­e­brate their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues as they be­gin an­oth­er chap­ter of de­vel­op­ment in their coun­try.

“By the end of to­day, the trend will be clear, and we will be in a po­si­tion to move for­ward to­geth­er,” he said.

Mean­while, the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date for A Part­ner­ship for Na­tion­al Uni­ty (AP­NU), Aubrey Nor­ton, is still some­what con­fi­dent of vic­to­ry, de­spite los­ing ground to po­lit­i­cal new­com­ers, the We In­vest in Na­tion­hood (WIN) par­ty led by promi­nent Guyanese busi­ness­man Azrud­din Mo­hamed.

Speak­ing with the me­dia yes­ter­day, Nor­ton said, “Yes, I be­lieve there is a path­way to vic­to­ry for our par­ty. I want to tell sup­port­ers thanks for the sup­port dur­ing the elec­tion. Be pa­tient, we are keep­ing on top of it; we will do any­thing to en­sure the re­sults of these elec­tions are the true re­sults. And we do be­lieve once there are no ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, then there’s a path­way to vic­to­ry.”

Mean­while, the Cari­com Elec­tion Ob­ser­va­tion Mis­sion (CEOM) held a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, where it praised GECOM for the way it con­duct­ed the elec­tions.

Chief of Mis­sion Josephine Tamai said, “The CEOM is of the view that on elec­tion day, vot­ers were able to ex­er­cise their fran­chise in a peace­ful and or­der­ly man­ner with­out sig­nif­i­cant in­ci­dents. The team ob­served no signs of in­tim­i­da­tion, ha­rass­ment, or cam­paign­ing in­tend­ed to in­flu­ence or ob­struct the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process. Polling day staff per­formed their du­ties in a pro­fes­sion­al man­ner and are to be com­mend­ed. Sim­i­lar­ly, the po­lice main­tained law and or­der at the polling sta­tions with ex­treme pro­fes­sion­al­ism in their in­ter­ac­tions with elec­tors and var­i­ous po­lit­i­cal stake­hold­ers.”

The CEOM, how­ev­er, did ex­press con­cern over the vot­er’s list, which it said con­tained the names of de­ceased peo­ple. It al­so said Guyana should con­sid­er en­act­ing cam­paign fi­nance leg­is­la­tion.

Guyana’s elec­toral sys­tem is based on a form of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, where a par­ty’s num­ber of seats in the 65-mem­ber Na­tion­al As­sem­bly is de­ter­mined by its over­all share of the votes. The sys­tem has two tiers: 25 seats are al­lo­cat­ed to ten mul­ti-mem­ber ge­o­graph­ic con­stituen­cies based on re­gion­al votes, while the re­main­ing 40 “top-up” seats are drawn from na­tion­al par­ty lists to en­sure the fi­nal seat count is pro­por­tion­al to the na­tion­al pop­u­lar vote. Vot­ers cast a sin­gle bal­lot for a po­lit­i­cal par­ty, not an in­di­vid­ual can­di­date, and the leader of the par­ty that wins the most seats be­comes the pres­i­dent.

Elec­tion re­sult im­por­tant to T&T

Econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmi­ki Ar­joon says T&T ranked among Guyana’s top five sup­pli­ers, ex­port­ing over US$400 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly. Ar­joon be­lieves that with Guyana be­ing the world’s fastest-grow­ing econ­o­my, the elec­tion re­sults will help de­ter­mine “how oil rents are man­aged, whether con­tracts are re­vis­it­ed, and how fast key projects ad­vance, all of which spill di­rect­ly in­to our en­er­gy and ser­vices ecosys­tem.”

The econ­o­mist posits that a PPP/C vic­to­ry sig­nals “pol­i­cy sta­bil­i­ty and con­ti­nu­ity, in­clud­ing steady project ap­provals, a strong push on in­fra­struc­ture, and no re­open­ing of the Stabroek pro­duc­tion-shar­ing agree­ment.”

He added that for T&T com­pa­nies, this trans­lates in­to re­duced un­cer­tain­ty and a clear­er path for ex­pand­ing their role in Guyana’s rapid­ly evolv­ing econ­o­my, with few­er sur­pris­es.

Ar­joon said a PPP/C vic­to­ry can al­so mean, “Guyana’s lo­cal con­tent pol­i­cy will con­tin­ue to shape how for­eign firms, in­clud­ing those from T&T, en­ter and op­er­ate in the en­er­gy sec­tor. For T&T’s en­er­gy-ser­vice com­pa­nies, the clear path for­ward is through con­tin­ued part­ner­ships and joint ven­tures with Guyanese firms, built around skills trans­fer, tech­ni­cal sup­port, and in­dus­try ex­per­tise.”