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Steps will be taken to remove GECOM officials who tried to rig elections – Commissioner Gunraj
By Kemol King
Kaieteur News- Government-nominated Commissioner of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Sase Gunraj said on Saturday that steps will be taken to remove officials who participated in the execution of the plot to rig the 2020 general and regional elections.
GECOM Commissioner, Sase Gunraj
His comments were made during a special programme aired by the National Communications Network (NCN) titled ‘Assault on Democracy’, and hosted by Director of Public Information (DPI) Eddie Layne. As a Commissioner, Gunraj was an integral figure in the pushback against the threat to Guyana’s democracy last year. Despite the fact that the recount eventually confirmed the fraudulent nature of the declarations made by District Four Returning Officer, Clairmont Mingo, he and other officials accused of being complicit in the assault on Guyana’s democracy are still in the employ of GECOM today.
On this date last year, the GECOM Secretariat had already attempted, through several election officials, to have the Chair, Justice (ret’d) Claudette Singh SC declare a national result which involved fraudulent numbers from the Region Four count. Some of these officials also participated in the national recount process which was necessary to correct Mingo’s fraudulent declarations.
This had gravely wounded public trust in the constitutional body mandated to provide free and fair elections. Other GECOM officials accused of participating in the plot to steal the elections are Chief Elections Officer, Keith Lowenfield and Deputy Chief Elections Officer, Roxanne Myers.
Notably, Lowenfield had proposed that the Commission move to declare numbers which were fraudulent, on several occasions. He also, in clear disregard for the orders of the GECOM Chair, attempted to illegally and unilaterally discard hundreds of thousands of valid votes in moves which would have granted A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) a false victory. As for Myers, she faced accusations by several small party officials, especially A New and United Guyana (ANUG) Chair Timothy Jonas that her participation in the recount process rendered it compromised.
Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance, Gail Teixeira
Gunraj’s view is that this status quo must not be allowed to continue.
“The predominant question on the minds of the public out there who have commented on that, they’re asking, why is Lowenfield and Myers and Mingo, particularly still in the employ of GECOM,” Gunraj said on Saturday evening.
“But I want to say to the nation now that, in short order, steps are going to be taken to remove them from GECOM. And I say that with no apologies because their actions were clearly designed to steal the election, to thwart the will of the electorate, and there must be consequences for that, because their presence there undermines the confidence in the system. If those who are charged with the responsibility to carry out a process, the guardians of the process, are abusing the process, then something is obviously not right, and that must be fixed. It’s plain and simple.”
Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance, Gail Teixeira also participated in the special programme and said, “Unless there is the removal of the persons who are guilty, or persons who are trying openly and brazenly, barefacedly to steal the rights of the people, the trust and confidence is not going to be at the level that we want it for local government elections and for next general elections in five years’ time. And these are critical steps we have in this period to make sure that people have confidence. This is a constitutional body that in fact was the instrument used, not the soldiers stealing ballot boxes in the past. This was where the constitutional body itself, GECOM, was the instrument to steal the elections, and that must never happen again.”
Teixeira noted, that she is confident Guyana now has a golden opportunity to build on this experience, and that Guyana must teach its young people to continue to defend their democratic rights for the development of the nation.
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