GECOM Secretariat has officially gone rogue on this nation

BY: SASENARINE SINGH

It has been 115 days since Elections Day when 464,565 Guyanese people stepped forward to cast their ballot on March 2, 2020. As this nation found out from the Elections Day count and the recount exercise conducted at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre, 460,352 or approximately 99.1% of them successfully completed valid votes while 4,213 or approximately 0.9% of them saw their votes rejected for a variety of reasons by the GECOM staff under observation by the relevant stakeholders. Those elections day activities and the subsequent recount exercise produced a clear winner – the PPP/C.

It has become apparent that the only reason Mr. Mingo chose to alter the vote count of the PPP/C by decreasing their tally by 3,847 valid votes (see table – Column J less Column I) was to give a fraudulent advantage to the APNU+AFC at these elections. But when you think Mr. Mingo appears to have characteristics of an electoral racketeer, one is now faced with the figures offered by Mr. Lowenfield.

Because of Mr. Mingo’s fraud, we had a recount exercise, which lasted some 34 days.  During that process, the GECOM staff counted, ascertained, and verified the votes from the 2,339 ballot boxes and the totals were compiled on Statements of Recount, which were then aggregated into ten District Tabulation Certificates authenticated by the GECOM staff.  The outcome of that exercise illustrated that the APNU+AFC received 217,920 valid votes, which translates to 31 seats, while the PPP/C received 233,336 valid votes, which translates to 33 seats.

However, what has happened since that recount exercise is that the CEO of GECOM unilaterally chose to abrogate the Constitution and the Representation of the People Act (ROPA) to firstly invalidate 275,092 valid votes (Column A less Column C) on June 18, 2020, and then again on June 23, 2020, he attempted to invalidate 115,844 valid votes (Column A less Column D).  What is absolutely clear in law is that he cannot legally proceed upon such a path and only an Elections Court has the authority to inquire into and to pronounce upon the validity of votes already counted and certified under the ROPA. And such a court can only be established after the swearing-in of the new President.  So Mr. Lowenfield is out of order and can be accused of being delinquent, grossly negligent, and insubordinate in relation to a direct instruction from the Madam Chairperson of GECOM.  In the Termination and Severance Pay Act, such an action on the part of a worker necessitates summary dismissal and even criminal proceedings being instituted against him under the electoral laws.

What constitutes a rejected vote or for want of a better word invalid vote is clearly outlined in Article 87 of the ROPA.  Under the law, an invalid vote is one that does not bear an official mark (e.g. the six-digit stamp), unmarked or voided for certainty, marked for more than one party symbol and marked so that the elector can be identified. In the final analysis, a credible and transparent process witnessed by all the relevant stakeholders identified and categorized 4,213 rejected ballots.  What this nation does not know is what sort of illegal process Mr. Lowenfield secretly utilized to personally invalidate 115,844 valid ballots.

It is clear as day that the CEO of GECOM has chosen to do his own thing with a national process and in so doing has chosen in his hallucination to annul the Constitution, the Rule of Law, the work conducted by hundreds of Guyanese and non-Guyanese in that 34 days recount exercise and most importantly to actively engage in electoral malpractice and voter suppression which is a criminal act. It is now clearly established that the GECOM Secretariat has officially gone rogue on this nation.

It is the sacred duty of the Madam Chair as the head of GECOM to prevent this nation from sinking into the abyss as a renegade nation that subscribes to a dictatorship rather than the principles of one person: one vote. I am trusting that after she has had an opportunity to gather the right knowledge during the recount process, she will use such knowledge to do right by Guyana; that is my prayer.