Georgetown, Sep 1 (IANS) Bharrat Jagdeo, of Indian descent, has won a third consecutive term as president of Guyana following the Caribbean nation's general elections held last Monday.

Announcing this late Thursday, Guyana's chief election officer Gocool Boodoo said Jagdeo garnered 64.6 percent of the vote, while his party, the People's Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), won 36 seats in the 65-member National Assembly, up by two seats from the previous term.

"This is an endorsement of our track record," reports quoted Jagdeo as saying.

Born in 1964, Jagdeo earned his master's in economics in Moscow in 1990. He the returned to Guyana and worked as an economist in the State Planning Secretariat When the PPP/C came to power here in 1992, he worked as an advisor to the Minister of Finance.

Jagdeo had become the president of Guyana for the first time in 1999 when Janet Jagan, wife of Cheddi Jagan, resigned from that post. He was then re-elected in the elections that were held in 2001.

Meanwhile, Robert Corbin, leader of the main opposition People's National Congress Reform - One Guyana (PNCR-1G), was quoted as saying that the elections have shown that "ethnic voting patterns remain deep-seated".

PNCR-1G lost six seats and has been left with only 21 seats in the parliament.

According to a report in the Stabroek News, he made the call for a national unity government, stating that the party leaders could not "bury their heads in the sand to the fact that there is a hardened perception among a substantial section of the Afro-Guyanese community and that they could not survive five more years of the PPP/C rule".

Indo-Guyanese, most of whom are descendants of Indians who had come to work as indentured labour in the country's sugarcane plantations in the 18th and late 19th centuries, today comprise 50 percent of the Guyana's population of over 750,000.

This year's elections in Guyana have come in for special praise for the relatively peaceful atmosphere in which these were held.

Representatives pf the country's Private Sector Commission (PSC), the Electoral Assistance Bureau (EAB) and the Guyana Bar Association (GBA) acted as observers in the elections.

Britain's High Commissioner to Guyana, Fraser Wheeler, read a statement on behalf of his country, the United States, Canada, and the European Union congratulating all Guyanese in general and the country's election commission in particular for the peaceful elections.