Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday accused Chief Election Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield of trying to prevent international assistance from reaching the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM).
“The UNDP has offered assistance in the IT (information technology) area and that’s an area that we badly need assistance in to have oversight over the registration, the tabulation, the quality of the list etcetera and when he met with the people he said I don’t need help in that area I need help in the media monitoring,” he told reporters at his weekly press conference.
Asked for evidence to support the accusation Jagdeo said that he has been speaking to persons in several areas and knows that the UN has been trying to offer IT support for ages, as long as two years ago.
“I’m aware that they have renewed that offer. I’m aware that Lowenfield presented to the commission as though the only offer from UNDP was for media monitoring assistance when he himself said he didn’t need assistance on the IT,” Jagdeo stressed.
Stabroek News reached out to Lowenfield for a response to the accusation but up to press time he could not be reached for comment.
While the opposition leader is adamant that there has been an offer of IT support commissioners have told this newspaper that the only offer of assistance they are aware of is that of media monitoring.
“The commission was told that the UN is offering assistance in Media Monitoring and similar activities,” one commissioner indicated.
Following a request from GECOM in early 2018 a United Nations Needs Assessment Mission (NAM) conducted in May that year recommended that priority areas of assistance should include database management, systems design, software development to improve the integrity of GECOM’s database, including voter registration and a solid results transmission system.
The NAM’s report recommended that the UN should provide a coordination mechanism for members of the international community to ensure coherence and avoid duplication of any potential support to the 2018 Local Government Elections and the 2020 General Elections.
However in October, then GECOM Chair James Patterson told a press conference that there was some dissatisfaction with the way some things were handled. Though he did not elaborate, he had said, “It is being refiled. There are still talks going on. The commission was not satisfied, quite, about the way in which it was handled. That aspect is being refiled. The process is still on.”
Government-nominated Commission-er Desmond Trotman later clarified that the UN had designed and begun to implement the project without GECOM input a move which angered the Chairman and some of the commissioners.
Trotman said he applauded the actions of the GECOM Chairman “in respect of the contemptuous behaviour of the UNDP’s Resident Representative in Guyana, on the matter of an aspect of aid to improve the functioning of the IT department of GECOM.”
“There are laid down arrangements on how aid should be addressed. The UNDP did not do that,” he said.
“The UNDP was supposed to, in collaboration with GECOM, work out the terms of reference of the offer but instead the UNDP did the terms of reference on its own, went out to tender and invited applicants and was moving to hire that person without even any reference to the commission,” he further explained.
There has been no update on the status of the project since that time except for recent statements by commissioners that they are open to accepting all international help offered once clear, non-competing Terms of Reference are in place.
