With the completion of the vote count from the March 2 polls prompting claims of fraud, an independent high-level Caribbean Community (CARICOM) team is due to arrive to supervise a full recount of the ballots cast in all ten regions at Guyana’s elections based on an agreement by President David Granger and Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo.
Although the intervention was welcomed yesterday by Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Chairperson Justice (ret’d) Claudette Singh, who said the commission would cooperate fully with the process.
The announcement resulted in the adjournment of a court action initiated by the PPP/C to secure an injunction to prevent GECOM from declaring results until a recount of the votes in Region Four was undertaken. The court action was initiated after the Returning Officer (RO) for Region Four Clairmont Mingo declared results on Friday night at the conclusion of a controversial tabulation process which has been discredited by independent observers and nearly all of the contesting parties, except for the incumbent APNU+AFC coalition. Eight of the nine parties which contested in the region had requested a recount but Mingo has since denied all requests claiming that none of the parties adhered to the statutory timeline to apply for the appointment of counting agents.
The CARICOM intervention was announced in a statement issued yesterday afternoon by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, the Chairperson of the regional body, who said the team would be chaired by Francine Baron, former Attorney General and Foreign Minister, and comprise Anthony Boatswain, former Minister of Finance of Grenada and Cynthia Barrow-Giles, Senior Lecturer in Depart-ment of Government of UWI, and that they will also be accompanied by the two Chief Election Officers from Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago.
“We believe that this is a giant step in being able to determine the will of the Guyanese people in the Election of March 2, 2020. It will also allow the electoral process to regain the confidence of all locally, regionally and internationally,” Mottley said.
“I have spoken directly to both the President and the Leader of the Opposition and they have both committed to abide by the results of a fair and transparent recount of each and every ballot, as supervised by the CARICOM team. We also agreed that there needs to be steps taken to secure the integrity of the ballot boxes until the recount takes place,” Mottley she added, while noting that efforts were being made to have the team in Guyana as soon as possible to begin the recount.
Although her initial announcement of the deal indicated that the process would focus on Region Four, which has been the source of much of the contention in recent days, a subsequent clarification by CARICOM Secretary General Irwin LaRocque indicated that the leaders had agreed to a full recount for all ten polling districts.
Mottley met with both leaders and the representatives of other contesting parties here last week when she led a delegation of regional heads on a two-visit to seek to resolve the elections stalemate.
Mottley’s statement said CARICOM has remained engaged over the last few days and she further noted that both Granger and Jagdeo have agreed that the recount should commence once the CARICOM team is on the ground. In this regard, she said all efforts were being made to have the team in Guyana as soon as possible and that a further announcement will be made as to the exact details once the team is on the ground.
‘Impose’
Meanwhile, in a brief statement released last evening, Singh noted that she had given an undertaking to Chief Justice Roxane George-Wiltshire during a hearing on Friday that she would facilitate the recounting of the ballots for Region Four.
“My commitment has now been bolstered… to have the Chairperson of CARICOM field an independent high level team to supervise the recount of the ballots for District One to District Ten. I welcome this initiative and would assure everyone, that GECOM will cooperate fully with the process,” she said.
However, the three government-nominated commissioners, Vincent Alexander, Charles Corbin and Desmond Trotman, questioned the legality of CARICOM’s involvement in the process. Alexander told reporters that the agreement and its use in the court purported to impose upon GECOM the decisions of an extra-judicial body.
“GECOM has a mandate. A legal mandate and we cannot import into GECOM extrajudicial agreements,” he stressed.
A few hours later, following a meeting of the commission, Alexander said that GECOM was considering a request from CARICOM in the interest of settling the current controversy surrounding the results.
“There was an attempt to impose on GECOM an agreement between the Leader of Opposition and President. The proposition has now been brought to commission by the CARICOM Secretariat and is being given consideration,” he said.
Alexander added that the commission is currently seeking clarification on certain issues, such as the modalities to be used in effecting the request and will convene another meeting as soon as the CARICOM team arrives in country.
Asked what role the Returning Officers will play in this process, he noted that though they have a statutory function the matter has risen to another level. “It has become a question of the commission which has ultimate responsibility for the work of GECOM to give consideration to the matter in the contest of the ongoing controversy,” he explained.
Asked whether it is likely that a recount could be completed within the 15 days from March 2 provided for by law for the declaration to be made, Alexander said it was unlikely. “It is going to be a tedious process which will take some time,” he noted.
Opposition-nominated commissioner Sase Gunraj expressed the view that “it was mature” of the two leaders to broker such an agreement. “It behooves GECOM, collectively as a body and individually as commissioners, to give effect to that agreement to ensure that this country moves forward and progresses as it should. Short of that, we all stand to suffer,” he explained.
‘Key thing’
Meanwhile, Jagdeo told a news conference that he believed that the CARICOM supervised recount would put an end to the current political crisis and bring satisfaction to all contesting parties.
“…Right now, the key thing is to make sure that the rightful results are announced and that people don’t feel cheated. They know that there is a process that is overseen by CARICOM and everyone else—all the observers and all the political parties—that yields the accurate results and that is simply going into the ballot boxes, which were sealed with the actual votes, counting them and then declaring the results,” he said.
Jagdeo, who noted that efforts were being made to have the CARICOM team here by today, also commended Granger for taking the step. He further expressed gratitude to Mottley for outlining a way forward for the conclusion of the elections process.
He said following the “fraudulent” declaration of the results for Region Four on Friday night, the country was headed into a situation that would have resulted in it being “ostracised, isolated, facing sanctions and our people suffering for this”.
He added, “This is the way forward, this is the way to solve the problem so that all of our people can go on with their lives. Whoever the winner is, the winner will be declared on the basis of a verification process which is the recount in the boxes.”
Jagdeo also said the recount has been something the party has been pursuing for a while now. “We have argued that if in the verification process they are varying numbers, then as is provided for by our law, the mandatory final count should be given,” he said.
He noted that there have been numerous attempts during the electoral process to prevent “proper” verification of the results and against this background, he thanked the observers and international community for their support in ensuring transparency during the process.
“We want to thank all of the observers and the international community for the strong positions that they have taken to get us to preserve our democracy… everyone who has made statements about these results so far and bought pressure to bear on the elections authority to have a transparent process,” Jagdeo said.
Ahead of the recount, Jagdeo urged GECOM to take the necessary steps to ensure that the ballots are secured by the seal of each political party, while noting that he hopes that no action has been undertaken to compromise the credibility of the ballots.
“We are going to continue keeping watch at these locations where the boxes, the containers, are held. APNU should do the same and the international observers. Everybody should be there to watch over their containers. In fact, it would be better to centralise them in one location, all the containers and then have agents of all the parties there as well as the observers to watch over the integrity of the boxes,” Jagdeo noted.
‘Welcomed’
The announcement of CARICOM’s intervention was also welcomed by other contesting parties, including A New and United Guyana (ANUG), the People’s Republic Party (PRP0 and the United Republic Party (URP).
ANUG presidential candidate Ralph Ramkarran was in full support of the recount and said that he was glad Granger and Jagdeo came to the agreement to have a higher body oversee the proceedings. He further stated that he only hopes that with this decision being final, no interference transpires and that the results will be accepted by both parties and the country.
He felt as though the CARICOM leaders listened to the concerns shown by not only the nation but the observers and foreign envoys in relation to the legitimacy of the results.
Also agreeing with Ramkarran was PRP’s Valerie Leung, who spoke on behalf of the party when she said that she was happy that the concerns raised by the small parties were taken into consideration when the decision was made. Leung said that prior to the release of the CARICOM statement, the parties had shared their concerns with the CARICOM body when they expressed their uncertainty over the results.
Meanwhile, URP Presidential Candidate Vishnu Bandhu stated that his only concern was the lengthy period persons have waited to get the results. He said that the wait, he was certain, added to the opinion that the results were rigged. However, he stated that the recount would be in favour of the country’s concerns. He lastly stated that a redo of the election would be gladly accepted since he feels most parties, including his own, were robbed of its votes during the wait for the results.
