The European Union Observer Mission to Guyana has last Friday, 5th of June, 2020, released its final report on the March 2, 2020 elections in Guyana, South America.
Following an invitation by then President David Granger, the European Union had deployed its first ever fully fledged observer mission to Guyana between January 25th, 2020 and March 20, 2020. There were a total of 55 observers from 25 European member states and Norway. The observers were able to observe and report on all aspects of the electoral processes until they were repatriated on March 20, 2020 in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The final EU observer mission report states that voting and counting were well managed in 9 out of ten regions in Guyana. However, the tabulation of votes were non-transparent and non-credible in Region 4 – which seriously compromised the electoral process. Further, the report states that senior GECOM officials acted in blatant violation of the law with regards to the tabulation of Region 4 votes.
Among the 26 recommendations to improve future elections are:
Transform the State-Owned Media into a genuine public service broadcaster. The European Union observer team had noted that the state owned media was biased in favor of the government.
The publication of digital copies of statements of poll when declaring results. This would evidently help to offset problems such as what occurred on March 4, 2020 when Mr. Mingo declared unverifiable results to the public.
