It was the Guyana Elections Commission and not the Chief Elections Officer that made the decision not to tabulate the votes from 29 ballot boxes that contained no official GECOM documents. The Commission made that issue clear this afternoon in a statement following reports in some sections of the media on the issue.

The missing documents issue was uncovered during the vote recount on Thursday and Friday and highlighted by the GECOM Counting agents in their observation reports.

In its statement this afternoon, the Elections Commission said while the votes were counted, a decision was made by the Commission not to have them tabulated at this point in time as the Chief Elections Officer has been tasked with investigating why the documents were missing.

However, it was noted that by the time GECOM made its decision not to tabulate the boxes, it was discovered that 28 of the 29 of the boxes had already been tabulated.

The Tabulation Supervisor has since been advised to highlight the figures during the livestream of the ongoing tabulation.

The Commission also made it clear today that the poll bags were checked for the missing documents, but none was discovered. Additionally, it said none of the missing documents are in the possession of the Chief Elections Officer as has been alleged in one section of the media.

According to GECOM, the CEO contacted some of the Deputy Returning Officers (DROs) responsible for the areas where the documents were discovered missing and while they committed to meet today to be interviewed about the issue, none of them showed up for the meeting.

The Commission said efforts are now being made to make contact with the Presiding Officers for the polling stations with the missing documents.

The missing statutory documents that should have been in the boxes include Marked Official List of Electors, Poll Books and Counterfoils as well as unused ballots and damaged ballots.

The Commission explained that once the issue was brought to its attention, a brief meeting was convened with Commissioners and the decisions were made.

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