Basil Williams falsely states CCJ nullified recount figures

Jul 22, 2020 News

Guyana’s Attorney General, Basil Williams, on Tuesday went before the Organisation of America States (OAS) Permanent Council and falsely claimed that the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) in its judgment on the Irfaan Ali vs Eslyn David et al litigation had nullified the legal order for the national recount.

Attorney General Basil Williams

Foreign Affairs Minister, Karen Cummings

PPP/C’s Anil Nandlall

By doing this, the AG contends that the CCJ’s ruling means that no declaration can be made by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) using the figures from the recount despite the ruling from the Apex Court being quite the opposite.
Williams was at the time defending the actions of the incumbent A Partnership For National Unity +Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Coalition raised by members of the OAS Permanent Council during the special meeting convened to discuss Guyana’s four month long electoral process.
The AG in his presentation claimed “The CCJ never made a ruling that the results of the recount must be used by GECOM in determining the results of the elections.”
Williams claimed that the CCJ “held” that the legal recount order was “subsidiary legislation”, “the lowest level of legislation in Guyana” and could not be used to interpret the Constitution of Guyana “which is supreme law.”
Further, the AG claimed that the Caribbean Court stated that the Order No. 60 was in “tension with the Constitution” and therefore, “it must go and it was invalid.”
Williams continued with his false statement and told the Permanent Council that the CCJ said that the recount order could not “create a different electoral regime from the existing one” and
therefore, they “nullified the order made by GECOM.”
He also claimed that the CCJ stated that GECOM would have to resort to the “original electoral machinery.”
For this reason, he stated, the Chief Elections Officer (CEO), Keith Lowenfield, disregarded the figures of the recount and defaulted to the initial declarations that the GECOM Chair discarded.
“The CEO in fact,” he said “in applying the rules of the recount order, which was a two-prong process – the count and then the credibility test that had to be applied to the recount. That’s what caused the reduction in the votes, and which the CCJ set aside. In setting aside that, the CCJ said this order cannot work. And you must go back to the original electoral machinery. And that’s why the CEO had to go back to the March 2 declarations.”
The ruling by Guyana’s Apex Court, however, was vastly different than the account given to the OAS by the AG. In fact, what the CCJ did was validate the recount order.

The CCJ ruled that “Unless and until an election court decides otherwise, the votes already counted by the recount process as valid votes are incapable of being declared invalid by any person or authority other than the High Court through an election petition.”
What the CCJ also did in their ruling was overturn the judgment passed by the Appellate Court deeming it invalid and of no effect. As a consequence, the 23 June report of the CEO that was based on this decision was similarly of no effect.
The AG’s comments were also buttressed by the pronouncements of Foreign Minister, Dr. Karen Cummings, who asked the OAS Permanent Council to be “patient” and not seek to “influence unduly the constitutional processes which are ongoing.”
While she acknowledged that a declaration is long overdue, Dr. Cummings, in her address to the Council, claimed that the Coalition has not interfered in the electoral process which is solely managed by GECOM.
“There has been no breakdown of the rule of law,” the Foreign Minister stated, adding that the Executive Branch of Guyana “has never tried to influence or interfere with GECOM.”
Her comments however, conflict with the three consecutive court actions brought by three APNU supporters seeking to derail the timely declaration of the results. Those also include the action filed only yesterday with the Court of Appeal, aimed at over-turning a ruling handed down by the Chief Justice (CJ) in the Misenga Jones application.
Moreover, Cummings reiterated the pronouncements of incumbent President David Granger, saying that he would “abide by any declaration made by GECOM in keeping with the laws of Guyana.”
In response to the comments made by the AG and Dr. Cummings, former Attorney General, Anil Nandlall, told the OAS Permanent Council meeting that the two were continuing to “spin a narrative that defies reality.”
Addressing the misrepresentation of the CCJ ruling by the AG, Nandlall said, “The narrative that he is reciting is a narrative that is inconsistent with everything that every other person and every other organization has observed and spoke about and wrote about the Guyana elections.”
Nandlall stated what the AG did was “misrepresent” the entire ruling of the CCJ, what happened at the recount and overall what happened at the March 2 Elections – something, he added, the Guyanese people and the region have been forced to deal with on a daily basis.
“We deal with misrepresentations, lies, and fabrications all because the repeated attempts to rig an election are being discovered, uncovered and made public,” Nandlall said.