GECOM did not verify list before dispatching to Immigration Head - PRO

GECOM did not verify list before dispatching to Immigration Head – PRO

Jun 02, 2020 News

The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) failed to crosscheck with their records, a list of 207 voters who the APNU+AFC claimed to be out of the jurisdiction on E-Day, before submitting said list to the Immigration and Citizenship Department for verification.

GECOM Chair, Justice (ret’d), Claudette Singh

During a briefing with the press yesterday at the national recount site at Liliendaal, Public Relations Officer (PRO) of GECOM, Yolanda Ward explained that the Commission did not exercise its powers to access the boxes which are housed in containers aback of the Arthur Chung Convention Centre (ACCC), despite its holding the power to do so.
When asked about whether GECOM holds its documents illustrating the names of those people that were ticked off as having voted, Ward responded by noting that the Official List of Electors (OLE) that GECOM has is removed and replaced in the boxes after the count is completed.
She specifically stated, “What happened, if you understand clearly the recount process, when a box has been counted, the content of that box is sealed back in that box including the list. A Statement of Recount is generated after the count but the box with the contents of that box as received from the container is sealed back and placed back into the container.”
Ward noted that the list in their possession is accessible, but the seven-member Commission has not made a decision on the way forward, although they sent off the list submitted to them since May 22.

GECOM PRO, Yolanda Ward

“This issue remains a discussion at the level of the Commission, she said while noting that the Commission met again yesterday after her briefing, and once a position is made the media would be advised.
Previously Chairperson GECOM, Justice Claudette Singh, announced that “He who asserts must prove,” with regards to the many claims, made by the coalition during the recount, of anomalies in the 2020 Elections process.
The Chair was, at the time, responding to a Kaieteur News article quoting Commissioner Sase Gunraj, who had said that the Chair is of the view that it is not GECOM’s role to probe the claims of anomalies being made by the governing coalition, APNU+AFC. On May 21nd, when she had made the statement, Singh noted that the Commission was still deliberating on what to do with evidence of election irregularities, and that when a decision was made it would be communicated to the press.
One day after Singh nonetheless dispatched a letter to Head of the Immigration Authority, Commissioner Leslie James, requesting him to verify the claims migration claims as put forward by the APNU+AFC, without prior consultation with the Commission.