Serial blunderer

Jun 02, 2013 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

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Gocool Boodoo, Guyana’s Chief Elections Officer (CEO), is probably the single most experienced manager of national and regional elections in the country.  He has been involved in elections management for nearly 20 years. He has functioned as CEO for three general and regional elections – in 2001, 2006 and 2011.
Boodoo first started working for the Guyana Elections Commission – GECOM – in 1993, the year after the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) entered office.  He served first as Divisional Registrar, then as Deputy Registrar, Registrar and Senior Manager (Administration, Human Resources and Finance) and, with effect from 1st August 2000, Deputy Chief Elections Officer and Deputy Commissioner of National Registration (Administration).
It was from this propitious position that he was ‘catapulted’ into the office of Acting Chief Elections Officer on 22nd January 2001 – less than two months before the National and Regional Elections on 19th March – following the sudden tragic death of his predecessor, Stanley Singh. He was confirmed in that position in April 2002.
Boodoo is not a novice; he is no dunce.  He had been granted a Commonwealth scholarship to study in the United Kingdom and holds the degree of Master in Education (1982) from the University of Manchester. He also earned the Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Guyana (1978) and a Certificate in Education, also from University of Guyana (1976).  He is a trained Teacher who taught in the education system for several years and served as a Lecturer at the Cyril Potter College of Education, before his appointment as Head of the Department of Foundations and Administration of the School of Education of the University of Guyana. He knows and understands simple arithmetic.
It was a surprise, therefore, for Dr. Robert Stephen Surujbally, Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission, six months after the 28th November 2011 General and Regional elections, to publicly admit that  Chief Elections Officer, Gocool Boodoo, had made “a human error” in his preparation of an incorrect declaration of the election results. What Surujbally did not say was that this was not Boodoo’s first “human error.”
The Chief Elections Officer is required to bring his final calculation of the allocation of seats in accordance with the national and geographical lists to the Guyana Elections Commission after voting concludes on Election Day. It was clear that, despite the long delay of nearly 72 hours after the close of poll, Boodoo’s  ‘calculations’ indicated, implausibly,  that the PPPC, with nearly 9,000 votes fewer than the combined A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and Alliance For Change (AFC) tally, was about to be awarded the majority of seats in the National Assembly.
Vincent Alexander – an opposition-nominated commissioner – quickly pointed out the mistake in Boodoo’s arithmetic. The Commission intervened. The PPPC was, eventually, correctly awarded 32 seats and declared the winner of the Presidency. It lost control of the National Assembly to the Opposition APNU with 26 and AFC with 7 seats.
Boodoo’s blunder, had it escaped the Commission’s scrutiny and been left unchallenged, would have remained in effect unless and until overturned by the High Court. The AFC would have been forced to file an election petition in the High Court to attempt to reclaim that single seat on which Guyana’s parliamentary democracy depends today.
The AFC, however, had been burnt by a similar blunder by Boohoo five years earlier when he supervised the flawed 28th August 2006 General and Regional Elections. The AFC discovered, at least by the day after the declaration of the election results, that the returns oddly ‘omitted’ the votes of several polling divisions. Khemraj Ramjattan, then AFC Chairman, went to see Boodoo to express his party’s concerns, indicating which divisions’ results were missing. Boodoo’s response, as recorded in the newspapers at the time, was that the presiding officers “made a lot of mistakes and they [the AFC] should not worry as everything would be alright.” Nothing happened and the PPPC retained the seat by default.
Raphael Trotman, AFC Leader at the time, complained bitterly that such a decision had obviously been taken by a “conniving and calculating mind or minds…This only goes to show what we are dealing with when we talk about the ability of GECOM to be credible and trustworthy enough to be able to produce any free, fair and transparent elections. The nation can judge for itself.”
The AFC, waiting for Boodoo, allowed valuable time to elapse before moving to the High Court to file an elections petition in its bid to gain the geographical seat it claimed to have won. The entire record of the pleadings in the hearing to determine whether the AFC or the PPPC was the winner of the disputed seat mysteriously disappeared. The charade concluded when Chief Justice Ian Chang dismissed the AFC’s petition on the grounds of a procedural flaw.
Boodoo’s record of performance as CEO for the 19th March 2001 general and regional elections had set a new standard for electoral bungling. The reports of every major foreign and local observer mission were splattered with adverse comments. The Carter Center, Caribbean Community, Commonwealth, European Union and Organisation of American States with one voice complained about the badly flawed voters’ list which resulted in the disenfranchisement of eligible electors.
Observer missions wrote of the confusion, irregularities and complaints about names missing from the Official List of Electors – OLE – used at polling stations, although the names were recorded on the final voters’ lists. Many citizens, despite possessing the statutory documentation, were unable to vote. The very suspicious sources of confusion were traced to variations between the Preliminary Voters’ List, Revised Voters’ List and the Official List of Electors that were generated by GECOM’s Information Systems Department.
The blunders which marked the 2001, 2006 and 2011 General and Regional Elections were avoidable. Gocool Boodoo’s twenty-year tenure of office at GECOM ended with the expiration of his last contract on 30th April 2013. He should be allowed to proceed on retirement.
Guyana needs a more competent manager to administer this country’s elections.

 

 

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