Guinea-Bissau “thanks for the support and help of Timor-Leste”
“The national leader of Guinea-Bissau and the Guinean People thank for the support and help of Timor-Leste in the voting registration process. With this support, around 90% of the potential voters in Guinea-Bissau were registered, in order to participate in the elections, next April 13th”. These words were spoken by the Prime Minister of the Transitional Government of Guinea-Bissau, Rui Duarte Barros, upon the arrival of the delegation of Timor-Leste, leaded by the Vice President of the National Parliament, Adérito Hugo da Costa, at the international airport Osvaldo Vieira, in Guinea-Bissau, on April 7th.
“The support provided by the brotherly people of Timor-Leste was decisive, as Timorese know the process and were able to face the problems related to voter registration in several situations. The Government and the people of Guinea-Bissau thank the Timorese people, through their Government, for their solidarity and assistance in the registration, which began in the month of December 2013 and ended successfully”, concluded Rui Duarte Barros.
On the same occasion, Tomás Cabral, coordinator of the Mission of Support to the Election Process in Guinea-Bissau, referred that “the support to the election process started with the registration and, during that registration the technical team was deployed across nine regions. The voting bulletins have already been sent to the regions and everything went well”.
Tomás Cabral also explained “according to the schedule, the second round of the elections will take place on May 18th, even if Guinea-Bissau is in mourning for the death of the former president and the election campaigns have been suspended. In order to ensure the elections, the Cooperation Agency of Timor-Leste, in collaboration with the police, supported the radio stations, to facilitate information dissemination and communication across the national territory.
One of the difficulties faced by the technical team of Guinea-Bissau was the size of the territory and the number of sucos (in total, 2.288) and of electoral units (in total, 45). The twenty technical staff were not enough to cover the whole territory, for which it was necessary to appeal to local recruitment to perform these tasks.
The elections, this year, in Guinea-Bissau caught the attention of the international community. Many countries have already sent their observers, including the European Union countries, which sent around 100 observers.
This year, the number of voters is over seven hundred thousand; while in the elections of 2008 were registered about five-hundred thousand voters. The elections of 2008 called upon the non-registry manual system; this year, there was a registry of the voters prior to the elections.
The delegation of Timor-Leste, which has arrived now to Guinea-Bissau, is made up of members of the National Parliament, members of the Government and representatives of the Media of Timor-Leste.
