It is doubtful whether any substantive basis can be found to nullify the work of GECOM in relation to the May 11 general elections, Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Commissioner Vincent Alexander has said.
Amid charges by PPP/C-nominated GECOM commissioners of irregularities in the tabulation of results of the May 11 general elections, Alexander has reiterated that the results are accurate. The PPP/C has refused to accept that the APNU+AFC alliance has won this year’s elections and former president Donald Ramotar and other senior members of the party have accused the coalition of rigging the elections, while challenging pronouncements from observer missions that the elections were free and fair.
In their latest pronouncement on the issue, the PPP/C-nominated GECOM commissioners Mohamood Shaw, Athmaram Mangar and Sase Gunraj in a press statement on Saturday challenged Alexander’s assertion that the PPP/C failed to present evidence that would have altered the results of the May 11 polls and accused him of providing “half-truths and misinformation.”
After listing a series of allegations, the PPP/C-nominated commissioners called upon Alexander, Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield, Chairman of GECOM Dr Steve Surujbally and all those who declared the elections to be above board, to agree to and provide requested information, “in a preliminary effort to give validity to their positions that the elections were not rigged.”
In response to the trio’s assertions, PNCR-nominated commissioner Alexander accused them of attempting to misrepresent, mislead and misinform and pointed out that the core issue is whether GECOM compiled and published results based on fake and or falsified statements of poll. “The answer categorically is No. The results of the Returning Officers (ROs) were cross referenced with the political parties and found to be identical,” he declared.
Alexander said that the PPP/C, at the level of District 4, did raise some objections but never presented their statements of polls at that level to support their contentions, although they were requested and given an opportunity to do so. However, the subsequent submission of statements of poll by a PPP/C delegation provided an opportunity for the issue of the alleged compilation of results in District 4, based on falsified statements of polls to be determined, he said.
“It was determined that the statements of polls presented by the PPP/C, as the original/authentic statements, were no different to those used by the RO in her compilation. The aforementioned, alone, gives credence to the results that GECOM declared and should bring closure to the matter,” Alexander asserted. He also noted that the matter, at this stage, can only be determined by the court.
Information technology
The PPP/C commissioners had said that to date, GECOM’s Information Technology (IT) Department has still not received all the Statements of Poll, yet a declaration of the results of the elections was approved by a majority decision of the Commission and done by the Chief Election Officer. According to the commissioners, Alexander is aware that the IT Department was ordered to cease operations and he is also aware that a
report which emanated from the IT Department and which established major differences in numbers between its aggregation and that of the Chief Election Officer, was withdrawn by the Chairman.
However, Alexander said that what the IT department received or did not receive is irrelevant to the results declared since that pathway was abandoned as a part of the process of the tabulation of the results when found to be corrupted. “It was clearly decided to bypass that pathway but the antagonists commissioners seem bent on keeping the irrelevant IT Department in the picture for reasons best known to themselves. Any report emanating from IT was therefore a non-issue but the antagonists requested one and were presented with the obviously faulty and incomplete document, which the Chairman quite rightly withdrew. What should be noted is that the CEO never intended, or sought, to table that document, since it had its origin in a pathway that was known to be corrupted and had been abandoned,” he asserted.
Nail
According to the three commissioners, Alexander hit the nail on the head with the statement that “the most critical point to note is that the three most relevant authorities (Returning Officers, the Chief Election Officer and the political parties) should have been in possession of the original and identical statements of polls.” They said that the problem is that the Statements of Poll in the possession of the “three most relevant authorities” materially differ.
“This debacle is compounded by the Chief Election Officer’s own admission that fake Statements of Poll penetrated GECOM machinery. We are baffled by this bold assertion of Mr. Alexander. These are the very reasons why we did not vote in favour of the declaration of the results because we insisted that some process be embarked upon that would have investigated, if not, reconciled these differences,” the PPP/C commissioners said.
Alexander noted that he did state that fake statements were discovered and reported on by the CEO, hence his use of the phrase “should have been.”
The three commissioners also said that Alexander’s statement that “there has been no evidence or complaint that the Statements of Poll, which were delivered to the Returning Officers, were corrupted” and “Each Returning Officer conducted a verification that involved the political parties and in no instance did the Statements of Poll used by the Returning Officers and those in the possession of the parties not correspond,” was outrageous.
“That the Statements of Poll in the possession of the Returning Officers are corrupted, some are fakes, some are tainted with irregularities, are the very gravamen of our contention. The verification exercise conducted by the Returning Officers with the political parties confirmed this,” the PPP/C commissioners said.
Acknowledging that this is the meat of the matter, Alexander said that it has already been pointed out above that the statements routed to the ROs were not corrupted and the evidence in that regard presented.
“The reports were received by all and no one questioned them, not to mention the open, inclusionary and transparent process that produced those reports. I find the malicious contentions (by the PPP/C-nominated commissioners) despicable and disingenuous,” he declared.
The PPP/C-nominated commissioners, in relation to the party’s questioning of 22 Statements of Poll in District 4, said that a PPP/C delegation presented photocopies of 22 Statements of Poll, accompanied by a spreadsheet, to the entire Commission. They said that neither Alexander, nor any other member who was present, requested original documents.
Alexander said that he repeatedly explained that at the level of the RO no evidence was submitted and the evidence produced at another level when checked did not contradict the ruling of the RO.
The PPP/C commissioners also said that the party requested a final general count in each of the Polling Districts but this was denied by the Returning Officers
Alexander said that the PPP/C requests for recounts were requested at three different stages.
The first request was administered, although the legal requirements were never met and they proved futile, he said. The second set of requests were turned down for the want of bases given the district verifications that were conducted and not contested except for District 4, the basis for which was dismissed, he noted. “As I said in my previous statement I know of no provision in law for the third request for a national recount in addition to the fact that the basis was either evidentially deficient or already dismissed,” he said. Alexander also noted that the PPP/C has all of the official statements of poll but wishes GECOM to provide information to further validate its declaration rather than them providing information to support their case.
“As for the gazetted declaration, GECOM was handicapped by the non-submission of the legally required submission of the names of the candidates, which were to be extracted from the lists,” he said.
“The non-submission of those names, in a timely manner, is the reason for the delay in the publication of the results,” Alexander stressed.
He said that the place for redress is the court and he doubts whether any substantive basis can be found to nullify the work of GECOM and anxiously awaits the findings with regard to the culprits who produced and inserted faked statements into the system.
