We can no longer accept Lowenfield’s skiddly-daddling!

Dear Editor,
GECOM Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield’s proposed work plan for recount of the General and Regional Elections, wherein fewer than 500,000 votes were cast on March 02, 2020, highlights the incessant abuse of basic interpretative language, unfounded reasoning, and twisting of reasonably accepted and instructive legal norms.
This plan is ineptly lacking in consideration of the need for the rightfully proven elected President to be installed into office, and for a national front to be put in place to address emerging health and development challenges.

It is difficult for me to disagree with the widespread advocacy that the time has come for decisive and swift punitive actions to be taken against the fraudulent, vulgar, evidence-based neglect of Lowenfield and those operating under his varying shades of darkness. Guyana’s civil future lies in the content of the ballot boxes that are currently in care of the untrusted GECOM Secretariat. Albeit, the directions of the courts and the requested and granted approval of the Chairwoman of GECOM to have agents of political parties watch the containers 24/7 give testimony.

GECOM’s autonomy under the Constitution of Guyana has long been significantly eroded. The biased, corroborative actions of the Secretariat and APNU/AFC have not only insulted the international community and illegally extended the time of the rejected Granger-led cabal by over 16 months, but now seek to lengthen the time by taking advantage of the Global COVID-19 pandemic.

It is a fact that the National COVID-19 Committee put in place by Mr. Granger has not done anything significant, or more than advisory, to protect Guyanese from the expanses of this pandemic. The level of testing is insufficient and notably politicized, to the extent that the public has complained. The outcry indicates that non-medically trained politicians are criminally dictating who gets tested, and delaying access to the results by trained practitioners. Those operating the hotline publicized by the Ministry are frustratingly nonresponsive, while our healthcare workers and other essential services’ providers currently do not have the necessary level of acceptable protection and support to engage in their functions without heavy risks to themselves and families.

Other than to provide the illegal APNU/AFC with additional time while they raid the national economy, why should it take GECOM more than five months to count votes that were 99 percent successfully counted within six hours of the closing of polls on March 02, 2020?

It is known that there is normally a 15-day timeline for the announcements of the results, and this would have been largely achieved had the Returning Officer for Region Four not embarked on his dubiously clouded and unverifiable antics.

Following the rulings of the High and Appeal Courts, which became necessary because of the duplicitous tactics of the Granger Cabal, the recount of the votes was approved. We unsurprisingly witness a plan addressing the approach of an Audit of 2020 Regional and National Elections that are clearly the subject of an Election Petition.

To date, no political party has complained that the shipping containers containing the votes for each region was compromised, and it is public knowledge that these are being watched. What is required is a recount of the ballots cast for the contesting political parties. Given that the ballots would already be separated and enveloped according to those gained by participating political parties, there is a need for addressing the ballot boxes and which envelopes. This means that the process of the recount will ensure opening, checking and tallying the PE7 envelopes with the votes for the individual contesting political parties.

Of note, other envelopes containing other groupings; such as proxy votes, Official List of Electors, ballots not used on Election Day, counter foils of used ballots; tender ballots, and envelopes with rejected ballots are not the focus. Rejected ballots which include those categorized for want of the official stamp (6 digits), marks that can identify electors; eg. (x N K), mark for more than one list of candidates are also excluded.

Editor, it is known that the PPP/C Commissioners would have proposed an alternative 10-day plan that speaks to increasing the number of stations to 20, ballot boxes where the boxes treated can be monitored and televised in the presence of representative observers. There must be a mechanism for addressing queries and publicly tabulating the counts at each station.
Billions of taxpayers’ dollars were made available and partly expended, although there is a clear need for an audit of the finances at the end of this process.

Further, I support the need for other independent auditors with autonomy, such as the Auditor General, to observe and validate the process, the results of which all parties MUST accept. I am particularly of the view, however, that perhaps 30 stations can be used to finally bring this matter to a swift closure. Guyana deserves much better! Our citizens can no longer accept this Lowenfield skiddly-daddling!

Sincerely,
Neil Kumar