Philipsburg:--- The committee heading the main voting bureau was surely not happy on Monday when the number two candidate on the National Alliance slate Frans Richardson requested that all the ballots that were casted on Friday be recounted.
Richardson and the number three candidate George Pantophlet delivered a letter to the chairman of the main voting bureau prior to making his request known orally during the verification process. Richardson said the request to recount the ballots is on behalf of the National Alliance and the reason they gave was because of the high number of invalid votes.
After making his request the committee members were heard saying they could have looked at the invalid votes and not all the ballots but Richardson insisted that he wants a total recount. This of course did not sit well with the committee members some of them were heard saying that the recount is a total waste of time.
However, election expert Louis Duzanzong said that the recount can change the outcome of the election if they find mistakes. Duzanzong said should the National Alliance get about 100 votes then they would have been able to get the other residual seat that was given the United People's Party which would give the National Alliance the eight seat majority ruling out any coalition. "Right now we have to see if this recount would change the quota."
As soon as the committee began the recounting several mistakes were found. There were invalid ballots counted as good ballots for the leader of the United People's Party, while a ballot belonging to the number 13 candidate on the UP slate Silvia Meyers was counted for Heyliger. Another error found Monday morning is the 15th polling station had awarded 30 votes for the 23rd candidate on the UP slate Octavio while the votes belonged to the number 22 candidate Jesus Richardson. Johan "Janchi" Leonard also lost one vote from polling station number two as they counted an invalid vote for a good vote in favor of Leonard. Leader of the Democratic lost one vote since it too was an invalid vote, while Frans lost one vote which was also invalid.
The recount is continuing and might end early Tuesday morning. In an invited comment chairman of the main voting bureau Reynold Groeneveldt said that the committee is finding some discrepancies and it has to be corrected. "Our aim is to make sure the final results are 100% correct" Groeneveldt said.
In the meantime it must be noted that the committee consists of the father of UP candidate Jesus Richardson and the brother of DP candidate Leroy De Weever.
SMN News has been reliably informed that the UP party was informed since Saturday that an error had occurred with Jesus Richardson's and Octavio's votes at polling station number 15. SMN News further learnt that due to the notification the UP party held a meeting early Monday morning to discuss the findings before the verification process and recounting. If the error was not found then Octavio could have become a parliamentarian based on a mistake made during the counting of the votes.
SMN News tried to obtain verification to see if the relationship with the two candidates and members of the committee would create a situation of conflict of interest. However, the chairman of the main voting bureau was busy during press time with the recounting process and he could not elaborate on the relationship of the committee members and the candidates.