Commissioner at the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Sase Gunraj, today, reported that the contents of the soaked Region One (Barima Waini) ballot box, have been retrieved and “attempts will be made by the end of today to have the contents thereof checked”.
After checking the ballots’ legibility, the Commission will then make a decision soon as to how it will proceed.
“That of course will bring to completion or finality, the results for District one,” Gunraj told media operatives outside the Arthur Chung Convention Centre (ACCC); where the national recount is taking place.
All the ballot boxes for District One have already been recounted, except the one that was water-logged.
Gunraj said that counting has begun for District Five (Mahaica Berbice). There were 99 boxes to be counted for Region One and 158 ballot boxes to be counted for Region Five.
Commissioner Gunraj, again, lamented the fact the while the recount exercise is progressing smoothly, it is being done at a very slow pace.
He noted that the one of the main solutions to address this challenge is to set up more workstations.
However, he noted that GECOM is still awaiting ‘approval’ from the COVID-19 Task Force in this regard.
Gunraj reminded that the ongoing national recount is as equally important as the present health concerns in relation to COVID-19.
Currently there are ten workstations stations and GECOM has a proposed 25-day timeline to complete counting 2339 ballot boxes.
With the current pace of counting it is highly unlikely that the electoral body will achieve this task in the time period.
