The Returning Officer (RO) for Region Four Clairmont Mingo has declared results for his voting district after a process roundly rejected by other contesting parties and observers except the incumbent APNU+AFC coalition, which stands to be declared the winner of the March 2 polls should they be certified.
Mingo made his declaration just after 11 last night following a day which saw international observers withdraw from the process and the RO appearing before Chief Justice Roxane George-Wiltshire in a contempt hearing.
Despite this and various other interruptions and accusations Mingo declar-ed that the APNU+AFC had won the Region with 136,057 votes, compared to 77,231 for the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), a margin of 58,826. This margin is large enough to close the nearly 52,000 vote gap the PPP/C had recorded after the completed count of the other nine regions.
Such a margin would mean that the APNU+AFC had won the March 2 General and Regional Elections if the results are considered credible.
However, according to various persons present at the count, the numbers announced from the Statements of Polls (SOPs) presented were clearly altered.
“It is a travesty…when you look, APNU numbers are clearly inflated…in some cases, twos have become threes and zeros have become eights. What comes out of this cannot be good for Guyana. At some point we have to consider what is in the best interest of the country,” Presidential Candidate of the Liberty and Justice Party (LJP) Lenox Shuman told reporters last evening.
Shuman has indicated that his party intends to call for a recount before noon today as provided for by law.
Opposition-nominated elections commission Sase Gunraj, in a Facebook post after the declaration, lamented that “this is a sad and dark day in the history of Guyana.”
He, too, stressed that the SOPs were evidently tampered with.
“There were visible alterations…figures chang-ed, numbers scratched out and replaced,” he noted.
PPP/C Presidential Can-didate Irfaan Ali described the declaration as “an attack on our present and our future as a nation.”
He maintained that the international community and observers have the SOPs and therefore know who the legitimate winner of the March 2, 2020 elections is.
Anil Nandlall, an executive member of Ali’s party, had already written to Chair of GECOM, retired Justice Claudette Singh, informing her that neither the Chief Justice’s orders nor Section 84 of the Representation of the People Act were adhered to.
Nandlall sought to have Singh direct Mingo to refrain from making a declaration of the votes cast or of communicating same to Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield. He also called on her to refuse to accept from Lowenfield any report declaring the results of these elections.
The request did not stop the declaration.
Devolved
Notably the results declared last night are not the same as those previously declared on March 5. The votes cast for each party has changed at both the regional and general elections.
At the regional level, APNU+AFC has recorded 6,046 votes less and at the general level two less. The PPP/C has recorded 2,381 less at the regional level and 98 less at the general level. Each of the other parties have seen their votes either increase or decrease, with the largest increase, 18 votes, recorded by the People’s Repub-lic Party at the regional elections.
The first sign that yesterday’s count would likely devolve into mayhem was a walkout by the four western diplomats, who left the GECOM counting centre just under an hour after the process had begun.
The Ambassador of the United States of America, Sarah-Ann Lynch, the British High Commission-er,. Greg Quinn, the Cana-dian High Commissioner, Lilian Chatterjee, and the Ambassador of the Euro-pean Union, Fernando Ponz-Canto left the Office of the Region 4 Returning Officer just after 10 am yesterday and though they did not speak to media, a statement issued later explained that this was because “it was clear that a transparent and credible process was not put in place by the responsible officials.”
They also expressed concern about intimidation tactics observed against those seeking to ensure that a credible process is followed.
Stabroek News has learnt from three party agents present that APNU+AFC Counting Agent Carol Joseph had threatened a member of the Guyana Bar Association Observer Group and made derogatory remarks to others present, including international observers, whom she berated for speaking during the process.
These observers walked out as did several party representatives. Later in the day, the Observer Mission from the Organization of American States (OAS) announced that it was withdrawing from Guyana completely.
By 10.30, when Mingo appeared in court for the contempt hearing, most stakeholders had vacated the Ashmins building where counting was occurring. The assumption was that the process had been suspended to allow Mingo to appear before the Chief Justice but Gunraj later told reporters that it continued with a clerk appointed by Mingo overseeing the tabulation.
With Justice George-Wiltshire having clarified that Mingo must present the SOPs for full viewing by all parties, the process was briefly suspended and relocated to GECOM’s headquarters at High and Cowan Street.
The presentation of SOPs, however, brought no relief as they were found to be less than satisfactory and Mingo refused to allow anyone to physically examine them.
Jonathan Yearwood, the Counting Agent for A New United Guyana (ANUG), condemned the process and demanded that it be aborted.
Mingo ordered that he be escorted out. During this process a physical altercation between Yearwood and Joseph occurred. In videos of the incident posted on Facebook, the two agents exchange words and Yearwood appears to push Joseph.
The police officers present were forced to separate the two and Yearwood was detained.
The process continued.
Not legitimate
Just after 7 pm, Shuman announced to the media that the count of votes cast in the general elections had been completed. He bemoaned the process and noted that in some cases the number of votes recorded on some SOPs exceeded the number of electors for that polling station.
He also called out the Alliance for Change (AFC) and the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), both members of the incumbent coalition, for being part of a process he labeled corrupt.
“A party that has championed change has become voiceless. There are scant words from them other than in support of this corrupt process,” he said of the AFC, while he lamented that the party that Dr Walter Rodney formed is actively participating in a process that is not legitimate.
Government-nominated Commissioner Vincent Alexander, however, disagreed.
“I’m not seeing alterations but they could be clearer,” he said of the SOPs
According to Alexander, the process does not provide for queries at this stage.
“There is a process and time where they can raise concerns…the law provides for them to note a difference between what they have and what is presented. They can make a request for a recount,” he explained.
This is, however, not true.
According to Section 84 (1) (b) where an election officer for a polling district discovers an error on an SOP in the possession of the RO, the Presiding Officer (PO) shall be informed of the mistake and the RO shall summon the PO and the persons who signed the original SOP for the purpose of effecting the necessary correction to the document.
