Election fraud and $350,000 alleged bribery

Jun 03, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – There are shocking things in this country that would make a social activist with a conscience find it hard to keep his/her sanity. The AFC has an email string, which is available to dozens of persons in this country.
On that string, there was a torrid exchange of views on the pronouncement by a sitting parliamentarian of the AFC that Guyana should be partitioned along ethnic lines because of the way the two major races reacted to the election drama.
I have written about this repulsion and criminal offence four times within the past few months citing one of the AFC’s leaders, Dr. Vincent Adams, as the person who disagreed with the parliamentarian. The ERC has not reacted. The AFC condones this person. This person is guilty of a criminal offence.
A prosecutor with the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) has been charged for alleged bribery of $350,000 (see my column of Tuesday May 25, 2021, “$300,000 bribery and rich Guyanese that rape the law.”). Using criteria to compare the destructive nature of criminal behaviour, which one of the following two acts are more detrimental to Guyana’s well-being and undermines the very moral and legal foundation upon which society rests – an officer in one of the public sector organisations taking a small bribe or election officials before the eyes of the world through live streaming discarding legal votes in a national election to declare the loser or the winner?
If you do a poll among citizens in a number of countries without naming Guyana and you put the comparison to them and solicit a response to the criteria, the majority would respond that election officials accused of engaging in criminal tampering with the election are more a threat to the existence of society than an alleged bribe taker.
What is available on video for the world to see is the behaviour of the Chief Elections Officer, Keith Lowenfield; his deputy, Roxanne Myers, and the Returning Officer for Region Four during the five months of election rigging. The State has charged them with criminal misconduct in the election drama.
Magistrates deny bail to the accused for offences a million times less dangerous than what this conspiratorial triumvirate has been charged with. The prosecutor did not object to bail. Why isn’t the triumvirate a flight risk? There was no ruling that they have deposit their passports to and visit the CID each week.
What a contorted legal system we have. Criminal indictments millions of times less detrimental to the integrity of the social fabric of this society are met with rulings that the accused is a flight risk and when bail is granted, those accused have to lodge their passport at the police station and report weekly. In many instances, they wait for hours at the stations they are assigned to be present because the commanding officer that has to speak to them is not there.
In this country, teenagers placed before the courts are remanded for possession of three or four grams of ganja. Keifer Burnett spent the whole of Friday, Saturday, Sunday and then Monday morning in the Kitty police station lockup for possession of one gram of ganja (see my column of Tuesday January 8, 2019, “African Guyanese 52 years after Independence.”).
We come now to yet another horror show in Guyana. Lowenfield, Myers and Mingo have not been interdicted from duty at the GECOM Secretariat. Between Lowenfield as CEO and Myers as Deputy CEO, the monthly earnings run into more than two million dollars. They are still at GECOM and if we have local government elections, these very people will preside over the process. The MP that called for ethnic partition last year is still in parliament.
What an insane existence of the rule of law in a country. Senior officers of the police Force have been charged recently with financial fraud and are off the job. The prosecutor at the GGMC is off the job but one of the AFC leaders is an untouchable. The GECOM triumvirate is an untouchable group.
How can young people cultivate an attitude of moral respect for their country when they see these bizarre injustices being played out before their very eyes? One of the mysterious figures in the five-month election drama is the just retired Commissioner of Police, Leslie James. The Force’s conduct in the five-month Draculean devouring of the votes of citizens cast on March 2, 2020 needs investigating.
Videos for the world to see and that are available, show that police ranks took over the GECOM Command Centre on March 4, 2020 and were carrying out illegal orders. Mr. James needs to answer the mysterious question – if not him, who was giving those orders?
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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