GUINEA BISSAU / ELECTIONS

STORY: GUINEA BISSAU / ELECTIONS
TRT: 1:58
SOURCE: UNITED NATIONS
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: PORTUGUESE /ENGLISH /NATS

DATELINE: 10 MARCH 2019, BISSAU, GUINEA BISSAU

SHOTLIST:

1. Various shots, people queuing at polling stations
2. SOUNDBITE (Portuguese) Ivaldine Joana Landim, doctor.
“The biggest problems are health and education. Education because students aren’t having classes in public school, only private. And there are many more students in public school.”
3. Wide shot, polling station
4. Med shot, woman casting a ballot
5. SOUNDBITE (Portuguese) Saido Sembalo, city hall employee.
“The biggest problems we see in the country are social problems. There are no jobs. And even if you have a job you don’t have a decent salary so that you can live. There are no classes for the younger ones. And many other things, that we could do, and wish we would, but there are no way to do them and work.”
6. Shots from the outside and insi de of the National Election Commission, CNE, headquarters;
7. Wide shot, McLachlan-Karr arriving at polling station
8. Med shot, McLachlan-Karr talking to electoral agents
9. SOUNDBITE (English) David McLachlan-Karr, Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Guinea-Bissau:
“This is a very positive step for Guinea Bissau, the holding of free, fair and transparent elections. It will be a new chapter in the country’s democratic history. It will pave the way for the formation of the new government and for the creation – we hope, of the right conditions for reform and for democratization, peacebuilding and stabilization in the future.”
10. UN’s Deputy Special Representative in Guinea-Bissau, David McLachlan-Karr, and Director, Africa II Division, DPA, Abdel-Fatau Musah, visit polling stations;
11. Various shots, counting votes

STORYLINE:

Peaceful voting and high turnout marked parliamentary elections held Sunday in Guinea Bissau.

In Santa Luzia, one of the biggest neighborhoods in this city of close to 400,000 people, voters started lining up along its unpaved roads before the booths opened at 7am local time.

Preliminary results are expected on Monday night, and the official tally should be announced on Wednesday. The party that gains a majority of the seats will be invited to form a government, according to political convention. More than 130 international observers were dispatched to each of the eight regions of the country of 1.9 million people. There were 21 parties running, the biggest number in the country’s history.

One of the key national concerns prior to the vote centred around electoral lists. In recent weeks, there had been some controversy over voters missing from official registers, despite having voter identification. Last week, CNE, with the approval of every party, decided they wouldn’t be allowed to vote. On Sunday, the Commission said only around 2% of voters were effected.

The United Nations, as expressed in a recent Secretary-General’s report published in February and a Security Council resolution approved last week, has high hopes that this vote will help to end the political crisis that has rocked the country since 2015. That year, then President José Mário Vaz, dissolved the government of Prime Minister Domingos Simões Pereira, whose party had won a majority in the 2014 elections. Since then, there have been seven different heads of government.

Visiting one of the polling stations in the capital Bissau, the Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Guinea-Bissau David McLachlan-Karr called it “a very positive result for the people” adding that that “people have come out to vote in large numbers, voted peacefully.

The Deputy Special Representative described the day as “a new chapter in the country’s democratic history. It will pave the way for the formation of a new government, and for the creation, we hope, of the right conditions for reform and for democratization, peacebuilding, and stabilization in the future.”

Last month, the Security Council approved a resolution which will see the closure of the UN Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Guinea-Bissau, UNIOGBIS, by the end of 2020.

At a press conference held as polls closed on Sunday, a spokesperson for the National Election Commission, CNE, said the voting had happened in a “calm, very serene” way with “acceptable” turnout, even though final results will not be known for some days.