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THE RECOUNT IS TURNING INTO A CIRCUS

Apr 19, 2020 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The Chairperson of Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) is making the proposed recount into rocket science. Common sense is becoming more complicated than calculus. The recount process is being reduced to a public circus. But unfortunately, it is no laughing matter.
To say that the recent decision of the Chairperson was sketchy and ambiguous would be an understatement. It is downright disingenuous. What does “no more than 10 workstations” mean? It means no definitive decision has been taken. Less than ten could mean 9, it could mean 5, it could mean 3, it could mean 1, or it could mean none.
If the Chairperson could take a step backwards and see the nonsense she has been entertaining, she would better appreciate her responsibilities and what has to be done. The problem which faces Guyana over the elections is partly her doing. Her Chairmanship of GECOM has been disastrous.
GECOM has been complicit in the rigging of the elections. It should have been automatic that those persons from within the Secretariat who were part of the rigging, should have been kept at arm’s length from the recount process. They cannot be trusted. They are shamed and disgraced. They have brought the Commission and the country into disrepute.
The Commissioners should never have had to formulate proposals for a recount. Nor should they have relied upon the Secretariat, given its track record, for making such proposals.
A professional and internationally-respected accounting firm should have been invited to develop recount plans and rules. The firm should have been tasked with developing these plans and rules with the aim of ensuring transparency and credible results. It is these plans and rules, developed by an independent entity, which should have been placed before the Commission.
Right now what is in front of the Chairperson are estimates and guesstimates as to how long it is going to take to count a ballot box. And things will get more complicated, because the cart is being put before the horse. How can the Commission decide on how long it would take to count a ballot box, when the rules for the recount, based on the Representation of the People Act, have not yet been settled? GECOM is doing things back to front.
The recount is a job for professionals, not perceived partisans. Professionals should undertake the planning and actual recount. It is no different from when someone is building a house. The homeowner does not take up a sheet of paper and draw a plan. He or she hires an architect or draughtsman to do this, and then takes the plan to a building contractor so that the costs of construction can be estimated and Bills of Quantities developed.
Why then should GECOM – which has demonstrated during this and previous election its ineptitude, inaptitude and incompetence – be tasked with developing a recount plan? This should never have happened, considering that the Commission is divided politically and the Secretariat has been implicated in skullduggery. High school students would do a better job than GECOM.
If a professional accounting firm is hired to undertake the recount, the first thing it would do is take a sampling of the results declared by polling agents across the country. It would then simulate ballot boxes with all the relevant documents which have to be checked. Based on these simulations, it would do a dry-run of the counts of the various boxes and come up with an average time to count a ballot box. It would then be able to give the average time to recount a ballot box.
This is not rocket science. It is basic common sense. But that sort of planning is beyond GECOM at this time. This is why it should have hired a professional accounting firm to also conduct the count. The Chairperson should have done this. But she has not, and the result is that she is straining the patience of a nation which is battling a deadly pandemic which has gone out of control.
The Chairperson of GECOM is becoming exasperating. With each passing day she is demonstrating why she does not belong within GECOM. She knows that this is her last public tenured employment. She knows that after the recount is finished, she will never again be allowed to have any role in any future election. The least she can do is to ensure that in her last public act for GECOM, before she is sent into retirement, she delivers a transparent and credible recount.

(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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