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Demerara Waves reported that on the opening day of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the 2020 elections (COI), the Chief Elections Officer (CEO) of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Mr. Vishnu Persaud, who has had a long association with that organisation, claimed that the CEO of GECOM ‘cannot alter information in the collation of results (of elections and) … to my knowledge and I must confess, I went back, I reviewed that section before I came to this hearing and there is no such provision’ DW: 04/11/2022). The Demerara Waves article went on to state that the Keith Lowenfield, who was GECOM’s CEO during the 2020 elections, had been cited for allegedly removing more than 100,000 votes on the ground that they were not valid and that his action had been frowned upon by Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders who had sought to resolve the dispute through a recount of all votes cast.
I am not certain what to make of ‘cannot alter information’; what sections Mr. Persaud had reviewed that indicated to him that information cannot be ‘altered’ and what precise inference I am to draw from the fact that CARICOM leaders may have ‘frowned upon’ the notion of ballots being affected. While no one should be allowed to present false information, the same facts can be interpreted in different ways and given the objectives, law and customs of a given sector, any CEO required to present a report has a duty and responsibility to interpret the facts as s/he sees them. This is precisely what I consider Mr. Lowenfield to have done.
So let’s talk about some of the facts surrounding the 2020 elections that the PPP does not want to recognise and that this COI, with its focus on what happened on elections day and statements of poll (sop), appear intended to help them smother.
The first important fact is that elections are more successfully manipulated before elections day and as the counting phase of the 2020 elections was coming to a close, suspicions of fraud gave rise to a dispute and the behaviour now being emphasised by the COI. The Caribbean Community brokered a recount process that put an end to that dispute – that is now again being investigated – and GECOM used section 22 of the Election Laws (Amendment) Act (ELA) to legally facilitate the recount process. Whatever rules/laws may or may not have been broken during the dispute, as some suspected, it does appear that there was a conspiracy to rig the 2020 elections long before elections day, as the CARICOM recount process brought to the fore many irregularities. The chair of GECOM, confronted by these allegations of fraudulent voting, absence of documentation, etc., requested and received verification, of most of her sample, from the relevant authorities. The recount process was intended to assure everyone of the credibility of the elections but apparently the report of the CARICOM recount team did not take the irregularities into account because, mysteriously, they were not given to the team!
It is also a fact that in keeping with international best practices, the Constitution requires that GECOM ‘ensure impartiality (and) fairness’ and section 22 of the ELA gives it the broadest authority to ‘Detect and document all attempted cases of voter fraud, … Determine, if at all possible before the finalization of counts and the announcement of election results, if the extent of any detected fraud regarding voting is sufficient to have a possible effect on the results of any election’ (http://aceproject.org/ace-en/
However, it is a fact that notwithstanding the awesome powers given to the commission, having requested and received substantial verification of fraudulent activities, which she admitted were worrying, the chair found it sensible to announce that GECOM did not have the competence to determine, before the finalisation of counts and the announcement of election results, if the extent of any detected fraud regarding voting was sufficient to have a possible effect on the results of any election. The former CEO rightly would have none of this and his report to the commission took into consideration the irregularities thrown up by Caricom recount team and assessed that over 80,000 votes were either fraudulently cast or made illegal by being associated -tainted- by illegal voting. (SN: Future Notes, 10/06/2020).
Whatever the Caricom leaders were ‘frowning’ about, the notion of tainted votes is not an unknown elections management procedure. In the February 2019 North Carolina elections, the Elections Board (Commission) ordered a new election for a US House of Representative 9th Congressional District. The chairman of the board, said ‘the corruption’ and “absolute mess” with absentee ballots had cast doubt on the entire contest. …. It certainly was a tainted election … The people of North Carolina deserve a fair election.’ On 21 May 2019, Malawi conducted presidential elections and the Malawi Electoral Commission declared a winner. This was challenged on the grounds that the election had been marred by several irregularities that tainted the integrity of the electoral process and distorted the results. The court nullified the results and ordered a fresh election to be conducted within 150 days. Both the electoral commission and the incumbent president appealed and the Supreme Court upheld the decision.
Any CEO has a duty and obligation to interpret and report on to the commission all of the information before him, and taking into consideration his recommendations it is for the commissioners to make the final decision. The fact is that, notwithstanding the extremely broad scope of its legal authority and the evidence of possible fraudulent behaviour before it, the chair and the PPP commissioners called the elections for the PPP without performing their constitutional duty and responsibility to assess the scope and impact of those irregularities!
This kind of absurdity could not have happen in a presidential system such as the United States. It is no wonder that a recent democratic US State Department report referred to the present government as ‘installed.’ Law must try to approximate justice so let us hope that the COI does not proceed with a blinkered view of electioneering in Guyana.
