Lowenfield report today

TODAY, the Chief Elections Officer (CEO), Keith Lowenfield, is expected to hand over his report on the national recount to the Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh.

The report, which will comprise a tabulation of the votes cast at the General and Regional Elections, will also include a summary of the observation reports for each of the 10 Electoral Districts. It is in these observation reports that the APNU+AFC, primarily, has highlighted over 6,000 cases which it believes are tied to electoral fraud. According to the APNU+AFC, close to 90,000 votes have been comprised as result of these suspected fraudulent acts.

These cases include: missing Official Lists of Electors, ballots for one region cast in another; ballots cast for the dead and persons who have migrated; persons voting without proper identification; persons voting outside of their districts without employment documents; large numbers of improperly stamped ballots at locations where Disciplined Services members voted; missing poll books and documents from one polling station being found in the ballot boxes of another.

Notably, on the eve of the submission, reports surfaced that the Elections Secretariat confirmed that the names of 48 persons, for whom death certificates have been produced, were ticked off on the Official List of Electors (OLE) as having voted. When Guyana Chronicle contacted GECOM’s Public Relations Officer, Yolanda Ward, she could not confirm or negate.

“I have not been able to confirm the authenticity of it. I will have to check with the operations people to see if they are aware,” Ward said.

In addition to the CEO’s Report, it is also expected that the three-member CARICOM scrutinising team will present a report pertaining to their observations, recommendations and conclusions to the commission.

Once deliberated upon, the Elections Commission will determine the way forward.

The amended Order states: “The commission shall, after deliberating on the report at Paragraph 12, determine whether it should request the chief election officer to use the data compiled in accordance with Paragraph 12 as the basis for the submission of a report under Section 96 of the Representation of the People Act, Cap 1:03, provided that the commission shall, no later than three (3) days after receiving the report, make the declaration of the results of the final credible count of the elections held on the 2nd day of March 2020.”

There is already division amongst government-nominated and opposition-nominated commissioners with regard to what should be done about the claimed and observed irregularities. The People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) has argued that every election will produce margins of error and the ones discovered by the coalition are minimal. However, the APNU+AFC contends that there are “clearly linked” patterns amongst the irregularities which invalidated votes cast for the party. It is also steadfast in the position that fraudulent votes cannot be counted and that GECOM has the responsibility to deliver credible results to the electorate.