Elections 2020, Day 48…Moses to Claudette: Int’l observers must be quarantined for 2 weeks; no counting after 6pm

Apr 20, 2020 News

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Prime Minister and Chairman of the National COVID-19 Task Force, Moses Nagamootoo, has outlined a number of stipulations to Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Chair, Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh, which if acted on could delay the start of the recount by at least two weeks.

His comments, made on Day 48 of Elections 2020 in his weekly column ‘My Turn’ in the state-owned Guyana Chronicle, are in response to a letter from the GECOM’s Chair requesting guidance from the Task Force on ensuring the recount adheres to public health guidelines according to the COVID-19 measures.
Nagamootoo said he wrote to Singh, to inform her that GECOM’s 10-hour work schedule should fall within the daily 6am to 5pm time frame and does not extend into the nighttime night time curfew period (6pm-6am).
Commissioner Vincent Alexander had told reporters that GECOM hoped to have the recount run for 10 hours a day, starting from 9am, but that it was necessary to get the necessary permissions from the Task Force to go beyond curfew hours.
Even though several categories of workers were deemed by the Ministry of Public Health’s order to be essential, ones at Guyana’s electoral agency was not so lucky.
Government-nominated Commissioner, Vincent Alexander, had not anticipated any difficulty on this front. However, since the PM’s response to the Chair, Alexander said that the Commission would now have to discuss the likelihood of starting the recount earlier in the day than previously planned.
Nagamootoo also spoke to another issue the Chair sought clarity on…that is… required protocols for quarantining persons coming from abroad, and who were invited to be part of the recount process.
The Government has been quarantining all incomers for 14 days, ever since it closed Guyana’s air space to commercial flights weeks ago.
This measure, meant to contain the spread of the virus in Guyana, does not exclude international observers if they are granted special entry by the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA).
That much was made clear in the Prime Minister’s article yesterday.
This could prevent international observers from coming at all. But in lieu of their presence, the Chair of GECOM also has to consider a proposal by CARICOM for the recount to be streamed live for the viewership of its team and the observer missions.
The third stipulation presented to the Chair by Nagamootoo is that GECOM should allow four technical experts of the Public Health Emergency Operations Centre (PHEOC) to conduct a site visit to assess whether distancing arrangements conform to the pandemic guidelines and the published Order.
The Prime Minister did not mention a response to the Chair’s question of how many persons would be safely accommodated at the recount venue, but that determination is likely to depend on the visit of the four technical experts to the Arthur Chung Convention Centre.
The Prime Minister premised his statements by saying that the pandemic is one that requires a collective approach by all of the society, and that it would be cruel for anyone to politicize the pandemic “in selfish pursuit of narrow partisan ends.”
Alexander told Kaieteur News yesterday that it was important for GECOM to solicit clarity from the Task Force, and that GECOM can now work with what it knows.
His colleague over on the Opposition side, Sase Gunraj, expressed some disgruntled views at the Prime Minister’s statements yesterday.
In a Facebook post, he wrote “the Forces strike again”, a nod to a statement made by the CARICOM Chair and Barbados, Prime Minister Mia Mottley.
After APNU+AFC candidate Ulita Moore successfully got the Court to grant the interim injunctions, Mottley had said that there are forces who do not want to see the votes counted.
Gunraj yesterday said that the political posture of the members of the ministerial Task Force presents a direct conflict of interest where decisions on this matter are concerned; that the requisite decisions should have been made by GECOM and merely communicated to the Task Force.
Gunraj acknowledged the seriousness of COVID-19 but added that the circumstances allow “the very people who conspired to thwart the will of the electorate… to be involved in the process by which it is restored”.

WHEN WILL THE RECOUNT BEGIN? HOW LONG WILL IT LAST?
If international observers come to see the recount in-person, they will be quarantined for two weeks. While GECOM could possibly take care of the other logistics of the recount in less time, it would have to wait until the two-week quarantine ends for each observer, for the recount to begin.
Assuming all of the international observers arrive in Guyana today; in that situation, GECOM would wait until about May 5 at the end of the quarantine to start the recount.
However, since the observers have not even been found to have indicated whether they will come, the actual start date of the recount would drag on, even further past May 5.
The duration of the recount depends principally on a few factors: the number of counting stations, the time spent to examine each ballot box, and the daily working hours. The GECOM Chair has not been precise on the number of counting stations that will be used, save to say that they should be “no more than 10”.
The exact determination likely depends on an examination of the recount arrangements by the technical experts supplied by the COVID-19 Task Force.
As for the time spent on each ballot box, it will vary depending on the number of ballots in each.
Also to be considered is that the count is not merely numerical. Commissioners said that the count will mirror the procedures necessary at the close of polls on Election Day, which include ascertaining the veracity of all the contents of the ballot box and ensuring that the numbers are balanced.
There are 2,339 ballot boxes to be examined.
Commissioners and the Secretariat had posed that the average time spent on a box would be one hour, or two. Alexander had told reporters that the consensus appears to be one and a half hour.
GECOM contemplates having the recount go on for 10 hours a day.
Under Task Force guidelines, GECOM would have to begin the recount at 7am every day, but even that is not likely, seeing as it would leave no time for the GECOM staffers, party representatives or observers to break. Assuming that GECOM counts for eight hours a day with 10 counting stations at an average rate of one and a half hour per ballot box, it would take 44 days to complete the recount.
Under this scenario, Guyana would be lucky to have a new Government by late June.

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