‘We’re not only counting ballots’

Having visited the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC), the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), today, is expected to decide on the number of workstations needed to facilitate the national recount – a move that would influence the duration of the process, and hopefully draw the commission one step closer to finalising the operational plan.

ACCC’s capacity will be among factors influencing the decision of the Elections Commission on the number of workstations that would be utilised during the recount of the votes cast during the March 2020 General and Regional Elections. On Wednesday, the Chair of GECOM, Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh, visited the Conference Centre at Liliendaal along with five of the six Commissioners – Vincent Alexander, Sase Gunraj, Desmond Trotman, Robeson Benn and  Charles Corbin. They were accompanied by the Chief Elections Officer, Keith Lowenfield; the Deputy Chief Elections Officer, Roxanne Myers; the Public Relations Officer, Yolanda Ward and other officials from GECOM and the Ministry of Public Telecommunications.

The Chair and the commissioners initially met at GECOM’s Headquarters before conducting the site visit and once the mission was completed, they returned to the headquarters for the continuation of the meeting.

At the Conference Centre, when approached by the press, Justice Singh said it was critical for GECOM to visit the site designated for the national recount. “Well we need to advise ourselves to determine how many workstations we would have,” the GECOM Chair said, while expressing satisfaction with the visit.

At the conclusion of the meeting at GECOM’s Headquarters, Commissioner Alexander told reporters that a number of important decisions were taken on procedural matters; however, the critical issue on the number of workstations will be determined today. “That pivotal matter is complex; that is the number of workstations and consequentially the duration of the exercise because those two things have not been finalised,” he said.

In the Chief Elections Officer’s revised draft of the operational plan, he proposed a total of five workstations – two more than he had initially suggested. In a counter proposal, Alexander said based on his assessment of the Conference Centre, there should be a total of eight workstations, while Commissioner Gunraj is holding firm to his position that there should be 20.

“Those who are proposing 20 workstations are saying, let’s not even work in the building and let’s work under tents in the yard. I have a difficulty with working in tents in the yard. I think it poses a serious security problem. It’s likely to lead us into the kind of mob behaviour that occurred at Ashmin’s (building) and we have to avoid that. If you use rooms, you have far more control over your operations as opposed to going into a big open courtyard where people are going to decide that they don’t want to be here and they want to be there, and create the kind of confusion they have already been exposed to,” Alexander reasoned.

But Commissioner Gunraj told reporters that the ACCC could comfortably accommodate the 20 workstations he had proposed. “The 20 workstations that I have proposed is easily achievable. If you want to do them outside alone, it is easily achievable, if you want to do a combination inside and outside utilising the facility, it’s easily achievable,” he posited. According to Gunraj, were five workstations to be used, it would take a lengthy period to execute the recount. “Five stations, moving up from three stations, does not in any significant way reduce the time for the recount to be done,” he posited, while rejecting that aspect of the CEO’s proposed operational plan.

However, the CEO, in his revised proposal, reportedly took into consideration the CARICOM arrangement, in which the high-level team, which had arrived in Guyana mid-March to oversee the recount, consisted of five persons. The high-level mission withdrew from the process as a result of a series of legal action, which blocked the recount, however, GECOM, on Tuesday, reengaged the CARICOM Secretariat to have them return.

Notably, in the CEO’s revised proposal, a timeframe was not given. He had initially proposed 156 days but this number is likely to be reduced when the commission decides on the number of workstations that would be used.

There is a total of 2,339 ballot boxes, and, according to the CEO’s estimation, it will take each team approximately two (2) hours to count each of the boxes.  It was explained that each ballot would need to be projected on a screen, but before arriving at that stage, the contents of the ballot boxes would have to be examined to ascertain the number of electors on the list, the number of electors who voted, counting votes cast for both general and regional elections and validation of spoilt, questioned and rejected ballots. In his proposed operational plan, the workstations would operate simultaneously for a period of nine hours daily.

Alexander said the Elections Commission, during Wednesday’s meeting, also emphasised that the national recount is not merely numerical. “The recount would not be a mere numerical recount; the recount would mirror processes that take place at the polling stations in terms of accounting for your ballots, accounting for your destroyed ballots, accounting for your spoilt ballots, correlating the number of votes cast…with the names struck off on the list,” Alexander explained.

It was noted that while the recount is not provided for under the Representation of the People Act, the commission has agreed that it would rely on Sections 83, 84, 87 and 89 (1) of the Act for guidance in the execution of the National Recount.
While GECOM, in a statement had indicated that the recount would be done in chronological order – Regions One to 10, Alexander said there is proposal to have the count executed simultaneously. “The proposition on the table, which is very much live, is parallel operations where Regions Four and other regions would be done at the same time. The idea being is that we do not arrive at a conclusion of the exercise with a region hanging,” he explained.

Additionally, the Elections Commission took a decision that each workstation would have four GECOM personnel in addition one representative from each of the political party that contested the elections, one CARICOM representative, a local observer and international observer. “In the case of the observers, it is not the individual teams that field observers. The teams have to come together, and for each workstation, among themselves, identify one person,” Alexander explained.

While GECOM has written CARICOM to have it return to Guyana to participate in the process, the CARICOM Secretary-General, Ambassador LaRocque, up to press time, had not responded to the correspondence.