While the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) is currently refusing to release statements of poll (SOPs) being requested by the Opposition PPP/C and other small parties, in 2011 it had acquiesced to a similar request made by A Partnership for National Unity (APNU).
On December 5th of 2011, following a meeting with the private sector, GECOM agreed to hand over scanned SOPs to the parties which contested the November 28th general and regional elections that year.
Then Public Relations Officer (PRO) Vishnu Persaud had told Stabroek News that the Commission decided to make available DVDs with scanned copies of SOPs to the four contesting parties.
With the March 2nd, 2020 elections marred in controversy, the PPP/C and other contesting parties are accusing the elections commission of electoral fraud in favour of a victory for the incumbent APNU+AFC.
The PPP/C as well as local and international observer missions have all specifically rendered the tabulation of votes for electoral district four (Region Four) as not being credible, arguing that the process was not transparent.
The questionable process is now the subject of a court challenge in which the Opposition is asking to have the SOPs in possession of the Chief Election Officer to be submitted to the court for perusal, against those which Returning Officer for Region Four Clairmont Mingo purported to have used for the tabulation.
The opposition parties are contending that the SOPs they have are clearly different from those the RO would have used and advanced that those in possession of CEO Keith Lowenfield are likely to be the best way of ascertaining the accurate documents.
They are contending that Mingo had to have been using numbers from some unknown source, as his SOPs do not correspond with any they have.
Against this background they have initiated legal proceedings calling for disclosure of the documents.
Attorney for Lowenfield, Neil Boston SC has, however, said that they will not release the documents as that can only be requested during an elections petition.
No official declaration of results has yet been released by GECOM which is the only authorized body in accordance to law that can make such a declaration. However, with the figures so far declared for all 10 electoral districts (Administrative Regions), the APNU/AFC coalition has a lead over the main PPP/C Opposition.
The court challenge currently being heard is not an elections petition. Such a petition as prescribed by law, has to be filed 28 days after the official declaration of results for both the general and regional elections by the CEO.
High Court judge Franklyn Holder is likely to rule tomorrow on whether the GECOM should disclose the SOPs.
Back in 2011, GECOM’s decision to release the SOPs was only made public after several APNU protesters were injured by police rubber bullets during a demonstration in which they called for verification of the documents.
APNU had at the time demanded verification of the SOPs and access to the statements but GECOM had declined. It was unclear the reason GECOM acceded to this as a result of the meeting with the Private Sector Commission PSC.
The row over the Statements of Poll had fuelled days of protests by APNU.
Following a meeting with a 9-member PSC team with then GECOM Chairman Dr Steve Surujbally and senior management of the GECOM Secretariat seeking clarity on the concerns of APNU on issues arising from the November 28th polls, GECOM had said that “foremost among the issues discussed” were: delays in the tabulation and release of election results, calls for verification of the SOPs particularly in Region 4, calls by APNU and the Electoral Assistance Bureau (EAB) for copies of the SOPs, discarded ballot box seals publicly displayed by APNU and the non-issuance of Certificates of Employment not issued to party agents.
Regarding the tabulation of the results, GECOM had said it gave the assurance “that the tabulation of the results of the elections was done on the basis of the SOPs from the respective Polling Stations, which were certified by the Presiding Officers and Party Agents who participated in the counting of the Ballots.”
These SOPs, according to a then GECOM release, were further checked by the respective Deputy Returning Officers and Returning Officers in that order for accuracy before being forwarded to the CEO where it is checked again for correctness.
The PPP/C’s current position is that Mingo could not have been using the SOPs to tabulate the votes as required by law, but rather referenced the use of a spreadsheet.
Surujbally, the 2011 release had said, stressed that for the SOPs for any polling stations to have been compromised “it would have required complete collusion between the GECOM polling day staff and the various party agents and observers present at the counting of the poll.
“It was further emphasized that the entire process from the point of counting at the Polling Stations up to the point of compilation at the Command Centre of the GECOM Secretariat was constantly overseen by Party Agents, Local and International Observers,” the release indicated.
The PSC had said that it was informed by the Commission that there was no legal requirement for GECOM to give any external agency, including political parties and observers, copies of SOPs
This is currently the position of the Commission.
“Nonetheless, Surujbally undertook to provide scanned copies of all of the SOPs on DVD to the Political Parties which contested the elections and to the EAB and the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU),” the PSC had said.
APNU’s then vice chairman Dr Rupert Roopnaraine had expressed delighted that GECOM had finally decided to release the SOPs to the parties, noting that the Commission may have yielded to pressure from the APNU and other groups.
Asked about GECOM deciding to release the results only after an engagement with the PSC, Roopnaraine had initially said that he was not aware of what role the Commission had in the process.
However, when pointed to the content of GECOM’s release, Roopnaraine then said that it was “good that the PSC was using its influence on the side of righteousness.” Further, he said that the recent developments as it related to the SOPs also indicate that the efforts of the marchers especially those who were assaulted had not been in vain.
In an interview with this newspaper in 2011, Khemraj Ramjattan, then chairman of AFC—now a coalition partner with APNU, had said that the party was in support of GECOM giving APNU copies of the SOPs, saying that this is exactly what GECOM had done to the AFC after the results of the 2006 elections were declared.
He had said that this allowed the party to make its own checks and to then go to the courts to contest the seat in Region 10 that the party had won. While the courts eventually ruled in the favour of the AFC, it never got to occupy the seat which had been given to the PPP/C.
