The government is playing for time

Apr 13, 2020 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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There is a lack of public confidence in the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM). As such, it is difficult to see how the Secretariat of the Commission can be tasked with undertaking the recount of the votes cast during the 2020 general and regional elections.
GECOM lacks credibility. The handling of the controversies which erupted during the tabulations of District 4 votes have raised concerns that the Secretariat has been infiltrated by APNU+AFC.
Now that the Court of Appeal has ruled that GECOM must undertake the recount, there is need for the Chairperson of GECOM to approach the Appeal Court for clarification as to what this means in practice. The Chairperson of GECOM should ask the Court whether this means that GECOM cannot hire a credible and reputable international firm to undertake such a recount.
If the objective is to ensure a fair and transparent recount, it is hardly likely that any court will be vitiating an election recount on the basis that GECOM had no authority to involve an external party in the process. Such involvement does not amount to abdication of any constitutional responsibility.
However, given the controversies which have already arisen, both now and in the past, over court rulings of the Court of Appeal, it is advisable that such clarification be sought. If the Court of Appeal says that no third party can be involved in the process of the recount, the recount should be put on pause and the decision of the Court of Appeal should be challenged before the Caribbean Court of Justice. An early hearing is likely, given the importance of the matter and notwithstanding the suspension of the Court.
Guyanese have waited for more than one month to determine the outcome of the elections. The international community knows the outcome; the political parties know who won and who lost. So why should the people, whose votes matter, have to wait for confirmation.
Guyana has become the laughing stock of the world. One Caribbean Prime Minister had to lament the election results becoming “a courthouse matter”.
The reason why this matter is before the Court has to do with the blatant dishonesty of APNU+AFC and its agents within the Guyana Elections Commission. Everything was going fine until APNU+AFC realized that it had lost the elections.
This blatant dishonesty, aided and abetted by elements within GECOM, is responsible for the mess that we are in today.
That mess will get worse unless there is a transparent recount process. Instead of GECOM trying to ensure this, it has been presented with a bizarre timeline of 156 days for a recount. Then the Opposition counters with a wholly unrealistic time frame of 10 days.
The process cannot be dragged out nor can it be prolonged. The Caricom Audit team which did a recount of the ballots cast in the 1997 elections took two months. But that was because they opted to go through every single ballot box themselves. They affirmed the results of the elections, meaning that the recount did not support the PNC’s position that the elections were rigged.
Hoyte never recovered from that embarrassment. His international reputation died from that moment when he was exposed for what he was – a man trying to manipulate a process for his own ends.
Both the PPPC and the government have agreed to a recount of all the Regions. There is a signed agreement to this effect, and the PPPC has not reneged on that agreement.
APNU+AFC is however trying to shift the goalpost and the narrative. It is now calling for a total audit; it is also trying to impute that the PPPC does not wish a recount of all the Regions. APNU+AFC is playing for time so that some of its ‘big sticks’ can continue to get their fat paychecks to tidy them over for the months ahead when they will be out of a job.
It does not require 2 hours to recount a ballot box, most of which on average have less than 250 votes per box (dividing the total votes cast by the more than 2,000 ballot boxes). The ballots do not have to be separated as they had to be during the count at the polling stations. They are separated in batches and placed in PE-7 envelopes already, according to the end-of poll procedures of GECOM. The rejected ballots are placed in PE-8 envelopes. Why then should it take 2 hours to count a ballot box?
There is no need for any further evidence as to why GECOM cannot be trusted to undertake the recount by itself. It needs to hire help. If it cannot acquire the assistance of international accounting firms, it should secure the services of some High School students. They would do a much better job than the GECOM Secretariat.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper)

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