PPP asks GECOM Chair to clarify lingering recount issues

Apr 20, 2020 News

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– insist on live streaming; exclusion of tainted elements in process

The Opposition’s People’s Progressive Party (PPP) General Secretary, Bharrat Jagdeo, has written to the Chair of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh, calling on her to offer clarification on the lingering issues surrounding the recount of ballots from the March 2, 2020 polls.

In the three-page letter compiled by party executive Anil Nandlall, the Opposition Leader pointed out that key elements were notably absent from the email circulated to the GECOM Commissioners on Friday last that was supposed to outline certain modalities of the recount.
“Your email, based upon your own assurances, was supposed to advise on fundamental procedural and substantive issues regarding how the recount is to proceed,” Nandlall highlighted.
However, this was not done.
In her email, the Chair after deliberating on the three proposals received by Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield, Opposition Commissioners and Commissioner Vincent Alexander; announced that “no more than 10 work stations” would be used for the recount.
This, she said would be “subject to the availability of the requisite equipment and technology to display the ballots.”
Further, the Chair also decided that each work station tabulate its own results and that the work stations will be situated inside of the Arthur Chung Convention Centre for security reasons.
All these decisions, Singh said, were made in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the requirements of social distancing.
Her email on the decisions left more questions than answers as an anxious nation awaits definitive word on the precise number of counting stations to be used, daily working hours for the recount, the duration and start date for the recount, among other pressing factors.
“It was expected to advise on crucial issues such as the timeframe of the exercise. The international observers, including the CARICOM high-level team, may not be willing to participate in a process that is open-ended in the current public health climate. You have also given no guidance on the issue of transparency, which is so vital to the integrity of the process,” he said.
Live streamed recount
The Opposition along with other smaller parties and international observers had issued calls for the recount to be televised to ensure transparency.
Even the CARICOM Heads proposed that the recount be televised permitting the process to be scrutinized by observers who will not be able to enter the country due to the restrictions in light of COVID-19.
This was also to be decided upon by the GECOM Chair. However, she gave no indication whether this would be done.
In the letter, Nandlall reiterated the PPP’s calls for the recount to be live streamed, citing that “telecasting or live streaming of the process in its entirety will enhance the transparency of the process to a great extent.”
This factor will have to be taken into consideration after Head of COVID-19 Task Force, Prime Minister, Moses Nagamootoo, announced that international election observers will be subjected to the mandatory 14-day quarantine period upon entry into Guyana.
Exclusion of “tainted elements”
According to Nandlall, GECOM is constitutionally endowed, to exclude “politically toxic and tainted elements within the Secretariat” from the recount process and replace them with “credible persons, drawn from apolitical organizations.”
Over the past weeks, international observers and the party have expressed their concern with such elements being involved in the recount process and called for them to be removed. This was also a decision to be made by the Chair, but was not done.
Nandlall accused the Chair of “being inclined” to drive the recount “using these tainted Officers of the Secretariat.”
“Unfortunately, in the face of the lack of credibility which afflicts certain identified staff of the Secretariat as expressed in statements emanating from almost every accredited internationally observer mission, their local counterparts and the contesting political parties, other than the APNU+AFC, you seem inclined to persist with using these tainted Officers of the Secretariat to drive the process.”
That factor was deemed “totally unacceptable” by the party and Nandlall cited that “they are much part of the problem and cannot feature in the solution.”
Further, Nandlall pointed out that the Chair made no recommendations in relations to how the process would be effectively oversighted by the representatives of the political parties.
He said that the mere presence of party representatives is “insufficient.”
“They must be accorded the opportunity to effectively scrutinize the tabulating process and inputting of the data, to ensure the correct total is arrived at in the end, in order to avoid what transpired in relation to the tabulation exercise previously done in respect of Region 4 results.”
The former Attorney General said that these concerns “will intensify” if the Chair insist on “using discredited staff of the Secretariat.”
Further, he requested that the GECOM Chair re-examine the proposal submitted by the party in light of the issues raised and urged her to implement the mentioned recommendations and also take special consideration of the recount provisions in the Representation of the People’s Act.

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