GEORGETOWN - Diplomats and foreign observers on Thursday questioned preliminary results of Guyana's presidential election as incumbent David Granger claimed victory and the opposition denounced fraud, setting up a showdown in the oil-rich South American nation.
The
former British colony on Monday voted to choose who will oversee an oil boom
that promises to be transformative for the poor country thanks to recent crude
discoveries off its coast.
Opposition
leaders denounced "thievery," and diplomats from the United States,
the European Union, Britain and Canada said results released by the elections
council for one of the country's regions were not credible.
"This
is an embarrassment that this emerging oil giant has to be sitting here at this
table now and speaking on the brink of a dictatorship," said Kian Jabour
of opposition party A New and United Guyana.
A
disputed election could derail the country's plans to use its newfound oil
wealth to spur economic development. It would fuel long-simmering ethnic
tensions between the country's Afro-Guyanese and those of Indian descent, who
have grown suspicious that the other is seeking to control oil revenue.
Opposition
leaders said the elections commission altered results from an area called
Region Four, the most populous electoral district, to give Granger, the sitting
president, of the APNU-AFC coalition, a wide margin over Irfaan Ali of the
opposition PPP party.
Former
President Bharrat Jagdeo said the commission's results for Region Four did not
match the sum of votes tallied in the statements of poll - the official
documents that reflect voting results at each individual polling station.
"Based
on our observation of today's (election's commission) proceedings at their
Region 4 office, and the fact that the full count was not completed, we
question the credibility of the Region 4 results," the heads of the four
diplomatic missions said in a joint statement.
GRANGER
CELEBRATES
The
electoral commission has not yet proclaimed a winner. Representatives of the
commission did not respond to requests for comment.
In the
face of the criticism, Granger gave celebratory statements to a rally of
supporters on Thursday.
"We
are here to serve you for the next five years," he said. "I thank you
from the bottom of my heart. When the sun rises ... the president is sworn in
again."
The
Region Four results were also questioned by the Commonwealth Observer Group,
made up mostly of former British colonies, as well as the Carter Center,
founded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife and which in 1992
helped Guyana hold a free election after decades of rigged votes.
Critics
had for days complained of unnecessary delays and what they called stalling
tactics, including the unexpected hospitalization of a key election official.
Guyana, which
has a population of less than 800,000, is expected to become a major oil
producer in the coming years as a consortium of companies including Exxon Mobil
Corp taps into 8 billion barrels of oil and gas off the country's coast.
The
country's politics has remained divided along ethnic lines since Guyana's 1966
independence from Britain.
Granger's
APNU-AFC coalition is largely made up of black Guyanese descended from African
slaves while the PPP mostly represents descendants of Indian laborers who
arrived in the 19th century to work on sugar plantations.
The
APNU-AFC has promised to use oil wealth to finance cash transfers to citizens,
in addition to investing in infrastructure and diversification of the economy.
The PPP
has criticized Granger for not insisting that Exxon give a greater percentage
of oil revenue to the state, but says it plans to maintain the contract intact.
***Reporting
by Neil Marks; writing by Brian Ellsworth; editing by Leslie Adler