GECOM officials remain before the court over elections tampering

Aug 01, 2021 News

One year later…

By Renay Sambach

Kaieteur News – In this week’s edition of ‘The Court Journal’ I will focus on the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) officials who are before the court for their alleged involvement in the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections saga.

Sheffern February.

Keith Lowenfield.

Those GECOM officials are: the Chief Elections Officer (CEO) of GECOM – Keith Lowenfield, the Deputy Chief Elections Officer (DCEO) of GECOM – Roxanne Myers, Region Four Returning Officer (RO) – Clairmont Mingo, GECOM Information Technology Officer – Enrique Livan and GECOM Clerks: Michelle Miller, Sheffern February and Denise Bob-Cummings.
The charges stemmed from a series of alleged grave violations by the GECOM workers and their alleged defiance of the instructions by the GECOM Chair, Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh, who instructed that the recount figures be used for the final results of the elections.

HOW IT BEGAN
Following the five months elections saga, the GECOM officials were arrested and subsequently slapped with private criminal charges in relation to their misconduct.
The private criminal charges were brought against them by PPP/C member, Desmond Morian, a former executive of The New Movement Party (TNM), Dr. Daniel Josh Kanhai, and PPP/C attorney, Charles Ramson Jnr, now Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport.
Additionally, three private criminal charges were filed against the Chairperson of GECOM alleging misconduct in public office.

Roxanne Myers.

Clairmont Mingo.

However, five days after those charges were brought against the GECOM Chair, the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), Shalimar Ali-Hack, S.C, dismissed those charges.
This then triggered Lowenfield’s lawyer, Nigel Hughes, to write a letter to the DPP asking her to review the private criminal charges against his client, take over the prosecution and possibly dismiss the cases.
Following the withdrawal of those charges against Lowenfield, the private criminal charges against Mingo and Lawrence were also withdrawn.
This was done after the DPP sent a letter to the Chief Magistrate, Ann McLennan, stating, “In exercise of the powers conferred on me by Article 187 (1) (c) of the Constitution of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, I hereby discontinue the charge in the above matter [for Lowenfield, Mingo and Lawrence].”
With the private criminal charges being withdrawn against the GECOM officials, during August 2020, the DPP had announced that she had decided to take over the matter and those criminal charges that were instituted against Lowenfield, Mingo and others in relation to the March 2, 2020, General and Regional Elections and the events that followed.
New charges were later instituted against the GECOM workers by the Guyana Police Force (GPF).

CHARGES
The GECOM employees are before different Magistrates in the Georgetown Magistrates’ Courts.

Michelle Miller.

Enrique Livan.

Lowenfield, Myers and Mingo were slapped with more charges in June 2021. The new charges allege that they conspired with others to declare false account of votes.
Their alleged attempt to rig last year’s elections has left Lowenfield facing three counts of misconduct in public office, three counts of forgery, and two new conspiracy charges.
Myers is facing two counts of misconduct in public office and a new conspiracy charge.
In addition to new conspiracy charges, Mingo is facing four charges alleging that he misconducted himself in public office by failing to disclose the number of votes that were counted during the elections. Apart from those charges, Mingo is also facing two separate joint forgery charges.
Also placed before the court was Information Technology Officer, Livan, who was named in a USB flash drive scandal surrounding the tabulations of votes that happened on March 5, 2020.
He was slapped with one fraud charge. Livan is being accused of being in cahoots with the RO after he allegedly removed two integral pieces of technology needed for tabulations – a USB flash drive and a laptop.
Moreover, February, another GECOM employee, was slapped with two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud. It is alleged that February worked along with Mingo to allegedly inflate figures from the March 2, 2020 polls to give the APNU+AFC coalition a victory.
Miller and Bob-Cummings are GECOM clerks. Miller was slapped with two charges which allege that with intent to defraud she did not use the figures from the Statements of Poll (SoPs) for the purpose of ascertaining the figures to make the declaration of the results for the said elections as is required by law, thereby resulting in a false declaration being made for the said District Four.
Bob-Cummings was slapped with two similar offences.
The DPP and the Commissioner of Police (Ag), Nigel Hoppie, had filed an application in the High Court for the SoPs and the Statements of Recount (SoRs) to be released to investigators. They had requested the documents of the election in order to facilitate a fair hearing for the charges against the key GECOM officials.
The controversial Region Four SoPs for the March 2 elections were later handed over to investigators at CID. The handing over of the documents followed an order by the Chief Justice (Ag), Roxane George-Wiltshire, for them to be turned over to the police by the Supreme Court’s Registrar, Sueanna Lovell.

DISMISSAL PENDING
In June, GECOM had decided to send Lowenfield, his deputy, Myers, and Region Four RO, Mingo, on annual leave pending the outcome of discussions on a motion seeking their dismissal.
According to reports, the decision to instruct the officers to proceed on annual leave followed a statutory meeting of GECOM Commissioners. The trio proceeded on leave with effect from Monday June 28, 2021.
The motions to dismiss Lowenfield, Myers and Mingo were tabled by People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C)-appointed GECOM Commissioners Bibi Shadick, Sase Gunraj and Manoj Narine at a statutory meeting of the Commissioners, earlier this month.
Lowenfield has since filed a motion in the High Court seeking several things including blocking the Government nominated Commissioners from participating in his dismissal.