The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Chairperson Justice (ret’d) Claudette Singh, in a statement, said Opposition-nominated Commissioner Vincent Alexander got it wrong on CARICOM’s role at the National Recount and observation of the process, and comments attributed to her. The recount, as prescribed in Order 60 of 2020, arose from challenges associated with 2020 General and Regional Elections, and ran from May 6- June 8, 2020.
In the statement, Chairperson Singh said she has taken note of comments attributed to her by Commissioner Alexander on the Freddie Kissoon show aired on Wednesday, 13th November on radio, and several social media platforms.
“Specifically, Mr. Alexander stated that the GECOM Chairperson did not provide the CARICOM Scrutineering team at the National Recount with the ‘list of names certified by the Immigration Department of persons who were not in the jurisdiction at the time of the election.’”
According to GECOM, Alexander’s comments sought to imply that the Chairperson may have had a sinister motive for not providing the CARICOM Scrutineering team with the list of names submitted by the Immigration Department.
GECOM said, recognising “Alexander sought to mislead the nation with his baseless comments that are not premised on law, this response is absolutely necessary to correct such misinformation/disinformation that can potentially cause public confusion.”
GECOM said in view of the foregoing and for the sake of clarity, Order 60 of 2020 made provision for a National Recount to be conducted. Order 60 provided for the recount process to be undertaken, executed and supervised by GECOM and be scrutinised by a CARICOM team appointed by the Chairman of CARICOM.
It is therefore imperative to emphasise that the role of the CARICOM team was only to scrutinise the recount process, the body asserted
GECOM noted the Constitution of Guyana, which is the supreme law, stipulates the method by which an election should be validated, pointing out that Article 163 specifically provided for the High Court to have exclusive jurisdiction to determine any question as to the validity of an election and in this regard, Parliament has made provision for the determination by way of the Validity of Elections Act, Chapter 1:04.
Against this backdrop, GECOM said it is evident Alexander’s assertion that the Chairperson may have “deliberately withheld the document from CARICOM Scrutinising team is baseless and could have only been intended to mislead stakeholders and cause confusion.”
