Time for GECOM to remove fraud from its agenda

May 19, 2020 Letters

---

DEAR EDITOR,

On Election Day, after the close of poll, the officials at each polling station, together, count all votes cast and prepare a statement of poll showing votes received for each contesting political party. All parties are required to sign this Statement of Poll. This is the official count. Copy of this statement of Poll is posted outside the polling station for public viewing, and signed copies are distributed to various levels of the GECOM organization and the Political Parties. Bottom line is that signed, authorized copies of the Statement of Polls, which represents the official vote count, are widely available.
The votes from the Statements of Poll for 9 regions (all regions except region 4) were tabulated and disclosed without any controversy reported at that time. The results from these 9 regions showed the PPP/C leading the APNU/AFC Coalition with 52,000 votes.
Each Region has a Returning Officer who is responsible to tabulate the votes for each region using the official count on the Statements of Poll. This was done for the 9 regions. Clairmont Mingo, the GECOM Returning Officer for Region 4, was responsible for tabulating the votes from the Region 4 Statement of Polls and declaring the results for the region. There were a number of irregularities in this process.
Primarily, we know that after using some 400 plus official statements of poll to tabulate the results for Region 4, Clairmont Mingo, resorted to the use of numbers from a spreadsheet for the remaining polling stations. At the start of the use of spreadsheet numbers, it has been reported that the GECOM Chief Elections Officer was called in and he confirmed that the spreadsheet numbers were significantly different from the corresponding statements of poll. Despite knowing this, he allowed the count of votes from the spreadsheet to continue.
The matter went to court. Following court review and order, Mingo was able to continue the tabulation of results, using unverified Statements of Poll and a flawed process. Again, GECOM either through its Chief Elections Officer and or other members facilitated this process.
When Mingo’s tabulation of votes for Region 4 was added to the other 9 regions, the PPP/C lead of 52,000 was changed to an APNU/AFC Coalition lead of 15,000.
Except for GECOM and APNU/AFC Coalition, all other observers declared the Mingo’s Region 4 Declaration as fraudulent and is therefore seen as a brazen attempt to rig the elections in favour of the APNU/AFC Coalition.
The PPP/C disclosed its tabulation of votes from Region 4 using the official statements of poll in their possession. The tabulation and the supporting statements of poll were also disclosed to the public. These verifiable results were very different from Mingo’s results. These results when added to the other 9 regions showed the PPP/C continuing in the lead by 17,000 votes.
Despite having their own copies of the Statements of Poll for Region 4, to date, neither GECOM nor the APNU/AFC Coalition is disclosing their copies of the statement of polls to support Mingo’s declaration.
With full knowledge that Mingo’s Region 4 declaration was based on unverified statements of poll and lacking credibility, the Chief Elections Officer used it to complete the tabulation of results for all 10 regions and attempted to have it declared as the final results. There was across the board objection to this.
Again, after court review and various representations from accredited observers the world over and local Guyanese institutions, GECOM agreed to do a physical recount of each ballot in each ballot box from all 2,339 polling stations.
Just prior to the start of the recount, Commissioner Sase Gunraj moved a motion to have the Mingo Declaration of results declared null and void and removed from the record. The GECOM Chair voted against this motion and opted instead to hold the declaration in “abeyance”.
“An abeyance is a temporary halt to something, with the emphasis on “temporary.” It is usually used with the word “in” or “into”; “in abeyance” suggests a state of waiting or holding. Different legal rights, like property rights, can be held in abeyance until matters are resolved”.
Since then, we have seen factual evidence that the numbers used by Mingo in the tabulation of results for Region 4 were wrong. We know this from the recount.
With evidence from the recount confirming that Mingo used false numbers in arriving at the results for Region 4, the declaration that is now held in abeyance should be discarded completely.
As I understand it, anything held in abeyance can become permanent. Therefore, knowing what we know today, it should not be allowed to exist any longer.
I believe that as long as the current Mingo declarations continue in abeyance, APNU/AFC Coalition and GECOM and the COVID-19 Task Force will not act in good faith and allow the recount to conclude normally. As such, the declaration that is currently in abeyance can become permanent. I believe this to be highly likely.
At this point, 528 Boxes have been recounted – 22.5% of the total. In terms of sampling, this very large sample. From this sample, there have been no significant discrepancy between the recount and the statements of poll. Other than proving that Mingo’s results for Region 4 were fraudulent, the recount also proves that the statements of poll issued on Election Day are accurate. It is reasonable to expect that this same condition will exist in the remaining 1,811 boxes.
What is important to note is that after 11 days of recounting, 528 boxes were counted. From this point we could expect an average of 60 boxes per day to be counted. Therefore, in the remaining 14 days, only 840 of the remaining boxes can be counted. There is no way the recount can be completed in 25 days, even with the introduction of additional workstations.
Conditions are ripe for matters to remain unresolved; either after 25 days of recount or for any other number of reasons. At the end of the 25 days for recount, the Temporary Status of the Mingo and Lowenfield declaration will automatically become permanent. This will not be good for Guyana. This is a lose, lose and lose scenario.
Accordingly, I am suggesting that Commissioner Gunraj should go back to GECOM with the following motions:
1. That the declaration currently held in abeyance be declared null and void.
2. That having established from a large enough sample that the recount is confirming the accuracy of the statements of poll; that the decision is taken to complete the recount process using statements of poll.
Respectfully submitted,
Sase Shewnarain

---

---