A New and United Guyana (ANUG) has formally asked Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Chairperson Claudette Singh to investigate the discrepancies in the votes tallied for Region Four at the March 2nd polls by Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo as well as the elections body’s Secretariat due to fears that it may be compromised.
“These discrepancies were not authored by Mr. Mingo solely, but point to a faction within the Secretariat acting in conspiracy. ANUG believes that confidence in the Secretariat is low, and the Secretariat is compromised. The conspiracy must be investigated to ensure the future viability of the Commission as a whole,” the party wrote in its June 7th letter to Singh.
The letter, which was seen by this newspaper, was prompted in part by confirmation by the recent national recount of the variances in the numbers used by Mingo to inform the now discredited declarations of March 5 and March 13, and the numbers in official Statements of Poll (SOPs). The recount has exposed Mingo’s tabulation as inaccurate. It shows that in his declaration he inflated the votes for the APNU+AFC by 20,000, while the PPP/C’s votes were decreased by 3,000. Mingo’s tallies gave the APNU+AFC coalition enough votes in the region to win the national elections, while the recount has established that the PPP/C won overall by over 15,000 votes.
It also noted the recent controversy over missing documents from ballot boxes in Region Four, while observing that the GECOM Secretariat has denied any knowledge of these documents or how they were misplaced. The Presiding Officers, it added, have produced copies of electronic correspondence showing that instructions did emanate from the Secretariat directing that those documents be delivered to the Secretariat “in defiance” of the statutory procedures. “Again, this needs investigation, ANUG urges you that if there are rogue elements within the Secretariat who undermine its very viability, they need to be identified and removed,” it argued.
Reference was made to ANUG’s previous letter to the Commission regarding its objection to an investigation, on the basis of its illegality, of claims of votes cast by dead or migrated persons, following Singh’s documented position that “who asserts must prove.”
According to the party, the Secretariat nevertheless appeared to be acting under the instructions of APNU+AFC agents in the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC) workstations during the recount and were instructed to check the Marked List of Electors (MLE) to confirm who voted from APNU+AFC lists in order to facilitate the coalition’s allegations of votes cast by migrants or the dead.
“While the APNU+AFC strongly asserts the veracity of its claims that all these names, being, in their words, “evidence”, of dead and migrant voting due to their own groundwork and information received from relatives and community members, GECOM staff’s acceptance of the instruction to check on whether these names were ticked on the MLE is the Commission’s participation in investigation of claims by a political party, which was not accurately captured in the Observation Reports,” ANUG, however, argued.
ANUG further said that there appears to be an arm within GECOM’s executing body “endowed with authority” to act either without instructions from the Commission, or against its overall objectives. This, it claims, was evident following the attempts at two declarations for Region Four, repeated delays to proceed with the count both at the Ashmins building, at GECOM’s Kingston headquarters, and at the ACCC, and the challenging of the Chair’s decision on CARICOM’s participation in the recount.
The party contends that “numerous” decisions were taken to date which appear counterintuitive to transparency and accountability, with the most recent one being to include the use of the words “not valid” in the Observation Reports for those votes held in ballot boxes with documents which were alleged to be missing, and the apparent reluctance to include these boxes in the tabulation.
“In light of the foregoing, we are formally requesting an investigation into the events that took place at the Ashmins Building and at High Street which led to the presentation of a substantial number of SOPs with alarming variances, and into entire management of GECOM which not only appear to be incapable of organising the simplest tasks, but to be severely compromised and partisan,” it concluded.
Up to yesterday there has been no response by the Chairperson to the party’s request.
In its final report on the elections, released on June 5th, the European Union Election Observer Mission has concluded that the integrity of the entire electoral process was “seriously compromised” by the non-transparent tabulation of results in Region Four, for which it blamed senior Guyana Elections Commission officials, whom it said acted in blatant violation of the law. It further said post-election developments “exposed a dysfunctional commission unable to control its own secretariat.”
