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Polling Day, March 2, 2022: Factual clarification

Jun 16, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor,

It is with increasing frequency that the politicians, in pursuit of their partisan agendas, keep referring to the events following Polling Day, March 2, 2022, in their attempts to score what can only be considered as political points. Unfortunately, Stabroek News in one of its editorials also chimed in on the finger pointing exercise. This situation has moved me to pen this letter of factual clarification to provide those who are interested in the facts, and ultimately the truth, with information that may aid them in their search for the truth.
Any call, by anyone, for political parties to produce their statements of poll is an indulgence in futility and subterfuge. Those statements are no longer a source in relation to who won or lost the elections. Their relevance and usefulness in that regard were nullified by the recount that produced statements of recount that were relied on for the purpose of declaring the results. Those statements of recount do not necessarily reflect what`s on the statement of polls. They are however a source of exposure of irregularities that actually occurred. If the petitions are not blocked from being heard, those irregularities will be revealed, by the evidential statements of recount; and confirmed. The usefulness of the statement of polls is as exhibits in the various elections related court cases, other than the petitions, which are intended to determine whether there are persons who sought to perpetrate electoral fraud. It may therefore be concluded that the electoral system strengthened by the legal system worked and produced an outcome that stands as the result, subject to any subsequent judicial determination.
It is therefore ironical that the same persons who witnessed Boodoo’s attempt to declare a false result and contended that the system worked, then are now gung-ho to prosecute those who they are now accusing of electoral malfeasance, although they turned a blind eye to the malfeasance of 2011; claimed that the system worked; and retained the suspect in GECOM’s employ. Had the malfeasance of 2011 succeeded, the impact would have been no different to what is alleged would have resulted if the Mingo’s declaration had been embraced by GECOM. In both instances, the results would have facilitated a declaration of the losing party as the winner by a one seat majority.
What is also ironical is that the recount was mutually agreed to by the major contestants and the judicial system was engaged to address the concerns of the aggrieved, yet the hue and cry is about a five-month period of attempted rigging. Albeit, that delay could have been averted if the Commissioners had not deserted their posts and denied themselves access to the statement of polls as the system intended. Had the GECOM commissioners not abandon their monitoring role at the central level, which allowed them to authenticate and be recipients of every statement of poll, they would have been able to determine the true result at the level of the Commission. They, however, abandon that process; and deprived themselves of the documentation and power to oversee the declaration of the results. They instead joined the uproar that much of the count in District Four turned out to be.
Their anxiety was however understandable since they understood that in 1997 the then Chairman of the Commission abandoned the deliberations of the Commission to make a secret declaration of the results and proceeded in one felt-sweep to swear-in the President.
What they ignored, or were unaware of, or cared not to observe is that there was a change in the procedure, after 1997, that mandated the Chief Elections Officer to produce a report for the Commission as the pre-requisite to the preparation of the final declaration. It was that system which in 2011 thwarted the attempt of malfeasance.
What we are therefore witnessing, in the name of the protection of Democracy, is political pandering and duplicity in the face of engineered system failure, and subsequent recovery.
If the judicial system in not stymied from hearing the petitions, GECOM may well be in a position to confirm what may have gone wrong; and positioned to take corrective action.

Yours sincerely,
Vincent Alexander
GECOM Commissioner

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