Nandlall rubbishes Alexander’s defence of unlawful elections declarations

Executive Member of the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) and former Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, has lashed out at a Government-aligned Commissioner of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) over his purported attempts to have the recount process being embarked on by the electoral body run afoul of the law.

Nandlall gave the stinging rebuke subsequent to public assertions made by Alexander on Thursday: that the Declarations of Elections Results for Regions One to 10, including the controversial declaration for Region Four, are all still lawful and valid, since they have not been set aside.

Alexander told media operatives that it is only when new declarations are made that the existing declarations would be nullified.
Alexander noted that even if Region Four were to be discounted as not legally made, then the other were, and “unless you have a process that supersedes that in its finality, then you cannot repeal what exists.”
He suggested that if the recount process yields new declarations for the March 2 General and Regional Elections, then those would supersede the ones already in existence.

The coalition Commissioner did not rule out the possibility of the existing declarations being used, and said, “Lord knows, they’re legal.”
He sought to qualify his position by saying, “I am not saying that they are going to be used, but I am not in the business of looking at something that is legal and crossing it out just like that.”

He said it is there to be taken into consideration, and that decision is still to be made by the Commission.
But the PPP member said the exhortations by Alexander “makes him the unsophisticated chief representative of the rigging cabal within GECOM.”

Nandlall was adamant that Alexander is in fact the “main architect of the fraudulent design which is currently being executed within the Commission as well as the Secretariat”
The former top legal officer in the country reminded that Alexander had, a few days ago, publicly defended the Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield’s proposed 156 days plan for the elections recount.

According to Nandlall, “The plan was Alexander’s”, and “Lowenfield was simply the conduit.”
Responding to Alexander’s defense of the declarations as legal, Nandlall reminded that “every international and local accredited observer team, all the political parties, the diplomatic community, CARICOM and the Governments of the ABC countries have all condemned it as fraudulent.”

He reminded that Alexander also wants to retain the fraudulent report prepared by Lowenfield to the Commission, which report contains Mingo’s fraudulent declarations.
Nandlall was adamant that “The singular reason for this decision is a recognition by GECOM that Mingo’s declaration stinks of fraud. It is this very reason why the Chairperson did not accept the report from Lowenfield and tossed it aside, because that report is tainted with Mingo’s fraudulent declarations.”

He said Alexander is not giving up, and is in fact now “hoping for some event to occur which would either prevent the recount from taking place, or if it takes place, rendering it a nullity, so that the status quo antes the recount will prevail.”
According to Nandlall, Alexander is also hell-bent on including in the Order currently under review by the Commission a host of matters which he hopes will cause the recount process to run afoul of the law, and that “he is doing so deliberately, knowing fully well, the likely consequences.”

Additionally, Nandlall charged that the Chairperson’s refusal to remove identified toxic persons from the recount process does not go down well; “neither is her entertaining of Alexander’s illicit strategy, rather than pull the mask from it and reject it unconditionally.”