With hundreds of Statements of Poll for District Four still to be verified, Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo mounted the second floor of the Ashmins building on March 5th and shouted out fake numbers to the horror of party agents, plunging the March 2nd elections into months of crisis which still remains to be resolved up to today.
By all accounts – and after being dramatically stretchered out of the building the day before following an apparent collapse – Mingo returned well enough to the High and Hadfield streets building on March 5th to energetically declare results which have now been established by the National Recount of votes to have been fraudulent. Mingo declared a total of 136,458 votes for the incumbent APNU+AFC when the recount found it to be 116,941 – a difference of 19, 517 votes. Mingo declared 77,329 votes for the opposition PPP/C while the recount’s figure is 80,920. This represented a swing of 23,108 votes – enough to fabricate a “victory” for APNU+AFC when it had actually lost the general election.
Even more troubling to those who were present in the Ashmins building on March 4th and 5th – the media were not permitted entry – were the clear signs of a conspiracy by senior Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) officials to commit the fraud which included preventing access to anyone who might want to serve legal papers on GECOM Chair Claudette Singh.
As tempers flared and fears grew about the theft of the elections, attempts were made to ensure that the GECOM Chair was aware of what was happening and a door was pushed down in chaotic scenes but to no avail.
Saturday’s declaration by the Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield that the March 2nd election recount result was not credible, though he was quite prepared to use Mingo’s figure for the certification of the outcome, will raise further questions about the apparent conspiracy.
Smoothly run
What had been a smoothly run election with nine districts already declared and awaiting only the largest district disintegrated into farce, acrimony and litigation which led to the recently concluded 33-day recount of votes at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre in the presence of a CARICOM team.
Tabulation of the results began on the night of March 2nd, hours after polls for the General and Regional Elections closed and continued throughout March 5th. The process however experienced regular interruptions as GECOM staffers complained of being tired and party agents raised strenuous objections to the use of a mysterious spreadsheet instead of Statement of Polls (SoPs) to verify and tabulate votes.
On the night of March 3, the tabulation exercise concluded just around 9 pm and Returning Officer Mingo advised all stakeholders present that they would reconvene at 9 am March 4, party executive and agent of the PPP, Anil Nandlall, told Stabroek News.
Nandlall recently recounted for this newspaper what occurred in the 72 hours after polls closed.
Nandlall recalled that on the morning of March 4, the verification and reconciliation process for District Four was scheduled to commence at approximately 12:30 am, however the process was disrupted as a result of various issues concerning the SoPs.
He went on to explain that on the said night, they objected to the process being halted given the need for the results to be announced in a timely manner and the anxiety that hovered over the nation.
“At all material times, the stakeholders were present and willing to continue to conduct the verification and reconciliation process, however Mingo and his officers, servants and agents blatantly refused to work through the period,” he related.
At the recommencement of the exercise on March 4, Nandlall said the staff was instructed by Mingo to continue the process. Strong objections, he said, were then raised by all political parties present as GECOM staff began to verify the number of votes from a spreadsheet instead of the SoPs produced during the counting of ballots at polling stations on March 2.
Major discrepancies
Nandlall said that this immediately revealed major discrepancies between figures recorded in the spreadsheet when compared to the SoPs in the possession of the contesting political parties.
“After strong objections from all the contesting political parties, except the APNU+AFC, the verification and reconciliation process were again halted,” he said, before relating that the process was halted to allow the officers of GECOM to retrieve and produce the SoPs for verification and reconciliation. However, only a small number of SoPs for polling stations for the East Bank of Demerara, were produced. GECOM has since refused to release the SoPs
Nandlall added that during the course of the morning of March 4th Mingo fell sick and was hospitalised. This disruption the party executive recalled caused hours of delays as there was no staff from the elections body on site to take up the task Mingo was performing. In addition to that interruption, there was the announcement of a bomb threat and the GECOM staff that would have worked for extended hours went home, resulting in a lengthy delay of the process.
“… lengthy delays were occasioned for no sensible or apparent reason and the Chief Election Officer (Keith Lowenfield) and the Chairperson for GECOM simply refused to take the steps necessary to complete the verification and reconciliation process,” Nandlall said.
He went on to state that following the ripple effects of the disruption, representatives and candidates of the contesting parties and the international and local observers, challenged and protested the attempt by Returning Officer Mingo to have the process come to a standstill.
Recalling the events of March 5 that led to Mingo’s declaration of the fraudulent results, Nandlall said there were protests and objections from all stakeholders involved in the process except those from APNU+AFC.
He noted that tempers flared as Mingo attempted to declare the results despite failing to conclude the verification and reconciliation of more than 530 SoPs for District Four.
Mingo had met with party agents and representatives along with observers the day after he was hospitalised and casually informed them that he would be making a declaration. This announcement was met with strong opposition. It was at this point that representatives of the PPP moved to the High Court and sought an injunction to prevent a declaration of the results. The securing of that injunction prevented Mingo’s figures from being used to swear in David Granger for a new term.
Executive member of A New and United Guyana (ANUG), Jonathan Yearwood described his experience. He told Stabroek News that he arrived at the Office of the Returning Officer, District Four at Ashmins building at around 6:30 pm on March 4.
Just after he arrived at the building, he said, the tabulation exercise commenced. He noted that while he was not equipped with any SoPs, he was looking at the laptop used by Sasenarine Singh of the PPP/C to verify the figures the female Deputy Returning Officer (DRO) was calling out.
However, at around 9.10 pm, he recalled the process was halted by the DRO who was conducting the verification after she informed that she and her clerk were hungry and would be taking a 15-minute break. This announcement was met with agreement by all agents and observers, Yearwood said, adding that when the process recommenced, they were able to complete the verification of 36 SoPs.
At approximately 9:44 pm, the staff announced that they were concluding the day’s activities and would continue at 9 am on March 5.
“This was in contravention to what the CEO Mr Keith Lowenfield had told the party agents and observers earlier in the day. He had said that on resumption in the evening, the process would continue through the night until the verification process was completed. This decision to shut down the process was met with loud objections from all party agents as we all wanted the process completed as early as possible. The APNU+AFC party representatives packed up their belongings and left the verification room. Mr Lowenfield then arrived and said the women were tired and the process would continue in the morning,” Yearwood recounted.
He went on to explain that subsequent to Lowenfield’s announcement, some persons offered to mobilise GECOM DROs to come and complete the process but that offer was rejected. The CEO then decided that he would furnish the tabulation centre with two staff members to finish the process.
After approximately three hours, Lowenfield kept his promise and delivered the staff to supposedly complete the tabulation and verification of the SoPs.
Mistakes
“The process was restarted and continued for 4 SoPs, during which time, mistakes were being made by the man calling out the figures. [At approximately] 1:48 am, the two staff [members] decided to call off the verification process until 9:00am. Only 40 SoPs had been verified since the restart at 6:30 pm [March 4]. This was met with a huge uproar from the party agents. One male staff [member] then unplugged the flash drive from the laptop on the desk and proceeded to leave the verification room. The SoPs were returned to a corner of the room where they were being kept,” Yearwood recalled.
He related that just around 2:10 am, after much commotion due to the postponement of the verification process, an individual discovered one of the GECOM staff members who had called off the verification in a side room outside of the verification room working on a computer with a flash drive plugged in.
Yearwood said an immediate alarm was raised and everyone rushed to the room to see what was happening.
“The staff [member] was accused of having been working on the laptop with the flash drive taken from the laptop in the verification room. He denied this and voices were raised in arguments. The male staff [member] was also accused of switching laptops and working on the one from the verification room. Photographs which had been taken earlier, proved that the laptop was the same. One female staff [member] was accused of having documents in her hand which she hastily placed on top of a filing cabinet,” Yearwood recalled of the early morning ruckus.
He said that police were then called into the building to investigate the claims and Lowenfield was summoned. Police detectives arrived along with the then Commander of Region 4, Assistant Commissioner Edgar Thomas, and proceeded to question the staff. (Thomas was later relieved of his command as the head of Region 4(A) after reportedly failing to clear the GECOM command centre of all persons in the wake of the bomb threat that was reported.)
According to Yearwood, the police commander informed all party agents that if they (the police) took possession of the flash drive, GECOM would not have it back until the investigation was completed, however long that took.
This revelation, he said, led to some discussion resulting in Lowenfield retrieving the flash drive and returning to the verification room to check what was on it. “… it was plugged into another laptop which had replaced the original one. When the screen opened, it opened to a file with South Georgetown and not the East Bank file we had been using. Very quickly the staff [member] tried to shut it down, but we had all seen it. When he found the East Bank file we told him to reopen the South Georgetown file but he said he couldn’t find it,” Yearwood recollected.
At this point, the ANUG representative said that IT personnel from the PPP offered to find the file for the staffer but he objected and very quickly found it himself. Upon opening the file, photographs were taken showing the South George-town file. The switch to the South Georgetown file was a sign that tampering was occurring, party agents have said.
Lowenfield then declared the process closed until 9:00 am that day. Upset at what unfolded, party agents then requested a printout of the information from District Four to prevent any further tampering with the data. Lowenfield accommodated the request and all stakeholders received their copies of the information at around 5am.
Party agents returned to site minutes before 9 am, when the process was scheduled to continue, Yearwood said, but he noted that this never occurred. He said there were no GECOM senior officers present and no word on the resumption of the process was related to party agents.
He recalled that Heads of Foreign Missions in Guyana were having a meeting upstairs with the Chair of GECOM.
Accreditations
At around 10:50 am, de facto Foreign Affairs Minister Karen Cummings arrived and called a meeting with the international observers where she astonishingly threatened to revoke their accreditations. Following objections from the observers and diplomats, Cummings dodged questions. She was then handed a cellular phone by Deputy Chief Election Officer Roxanne Myers and from a video recording seen by this newspaper Cummings communicated over the phone that she was leaving. She walked out of the meeting area without offering any explanation or clarity for her threats.
Minutes after Cummings left, Assistant Commissioner Thomas informed persons inside the building of a bomb threat against the building and instructed everyone present to leave the building. However, party agents and others refused to leave.
GECOM staff upon receiving the instruction to leave the building complied but returned to the building approximately 20 minutes after. This entire episode was viewed as a charade to get persons out of the building.
Yearwood went on to recall that at approximately 1:20 pm, Mingo arrived inside the verification room and attempted to make the declaration for District Four but was shouted down and thus was unable to make the declaration.
“There had been no restart of the verification process for the day but he was trying to make the declaration for the Region. Mr Mingo then left the room having failed to make the declaration. Shortly after this, Mr Khemraj Ramjattan [Minister of Public Security] entered the building and went upstairs. He didn’t stay very long before he departed. [About] 2:30 pm Mr. Mingo stands on the stairs between the upper and middle flats and holds a paper in his hand. After a few minutes he signs the paper. The party agents were shouting No! at him but he ignored everyone. I believe he made the declaration for Region Four at this time, but he couldn’t be heard as the noise by the party agents was too much,” the ANUG representative recounted.
Yearwood recalled that as the commotion over the declaration died down, twelve ministers of the APNU+AFC government arrived at the tabulation centre. It was somewhat surprising to see the ministers present at the tabulation centre as they were not present at any other point. The Ministers’ arrival, he said, piqued the curiosity of those present at the tabulation centre. They spent approximately 40 minutes in the building before leaving. Questions put to the Ministers as they left the building were unanswered. The Ministers who showed up were Sydney Allicock, Keith Scott, Valerie Lowe, Ronald Bulkan, Nicolette Henry, Basil Williams, George Norton, Winston Jordan, Simona Broomes, Winston Felix, Jaipaul Sharma, and Tabitha Sarabo-Halley.
At 3:58 pm, Yearwood said that a mid-level GECOM staffer entered the verification room and announced that everyone would have to vacate the building so the next stage could take place. In response to his instruction party agents again responded that no one was going to leave the building.
Medical personnel
Medical personnel arrived at the tabulation centre at 5:45pm and approached the room where the GECOM Chair, retired Justice Singh was located, Yearwood said, as he described the events that occurred at dusk. He said the chair at that point had not been seen for nearly three hours and was inaccessible to everyone. This led persons to intervene to check on her well-being and the Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) were summoned.
“The Police refused or prevented the medical personnel from seeing and attending to the Chair. They [EMTs] subsequently left the building. Shortly after a man entered saying he had received a phone call from the Chair saying she was not feeling well and if he could come to her assistance. He was also prevented from seeing the Chair,” ANUG’s member said. He explained further that “a crowd of persons then rushed up the stairs and pushed the police aside and entered a room but the Chair was not in there. The crowd was prevented from entering the room next door through a connecting door. They then kicked in the door in the corridor for the room next door, there they saw (Justice Singh) at the back of the room. The curtains were ripped off so persons outside of the room could see into the room.”
Yearwood related that just after 6:30 pm he left the building and while on his way out he saw a 30-seater bus arriving with police officers. The Police entered the building and brusquely evicted all of the party representatives and observers.
During the course of the afternoon, APNU+AFC party agent Volda Lawrence had clashed with rival agents and representatives of other parties as she descended the stairs following the District Four declaration by Mingo.
Most of the persons who traded barbs with Lawrence were representatives of the opposition PPP/C. Lawrence, backed by APNU+AFC supporters, later said she was defending herself after being verbally attacked by representatives of the PPP.
The word “thief” was thrown at her and she responded with “murderers” during a standoff that lasted for approximately 15 minutes.
Lengthy pause
Presidential Candidate of The Citizens Initiative (TCI) Rondha Ann Lam in a Facebook post also gave a similar account of the events that occurred on March 4 and 5.
In her version of the events, Lam said there was a lengthy pause in the verification process. At the end of March 3 she said only 139 SOPs for District Four had been processed in 18 hours. She stated that no verification occurred during the day for March 4 and as they were continuing their work on the morning of March 5 at around 2:30 am the process was stalled. The process was never restarted as it was scheduled to.
“At 12.05 pm the DCEO (Myers) announces that the count will restart after the room personnel is reduced to 3 agents per party, 2 observers per body and cleared of all garbage,” Lam related in her post while noting that at 1:06 pm, Mingo arrived to declare results. He made a brief statement about his illness and stated that he will then make a declaration of results for Region Four despite over 500 SoPs awaiting to be verified”, she added.
“Parties present erupted into protest and observed that the statement of polls are unprotected and urged that they be observed via video,” she said as loud protests continued against the Returning Officer’s announcement. He ignored the protest and walked out of the tabulation centre without declaring a winner.
While there was a lull subsequent to Mingo’s action at around 2:06 pm, the government, opposition and the new parties demanded that complete verification with objections by anyone, be placed in writing as per the law before a declaration can be made.
Between 2:24 and 2:32 pm, Lam said Mingo proceeded to declare the results despite chants of protest from the parties present. “He stood in the upper level of building and reads the declaration and signs it,” she recalled.
At 4:47 pm, she said an injunction was secured by the PPP/C to prevent the declaration of the results but at 5:53 pm GECOM released the declared results for District 4 to the media. According to Lam, no statement was presented to any party representatives that were present at the tabulation Centre and only Lawrence, who was a party representative, would have seen and signed it.
She also recalls attempts to rescue Singh following an allegation by PPP that she was being held hostage but police prevented persons from doing so. She opined that the sequestration of Singh was a gambit to make it impossible to serve the injunction.
Like Yearwood, she recalled the day concluded with the police riot squad arriving in an effort to clear the building.
Shazam Ally, a TCI member who has also been involved in the post-election process including the recount told Stabroek News that the entire ordeal paints a clear picture that there were attempts to commit electoral fraud.
He believes that it is because the small parties have played and are playing an integral role in the fight that this has been exposed.
“If it was the PPP alone people would have likely ignored such claims but with the presence of the small parties and many observers we were able to see what was happening and speak out against what was happening. I believe the small parties contributed significantly to this process to ensure our democracy is safeguarded,” Ally emphasised.
Following the declaration, observer teams along with diplomatic missions stationed here who were observing the electoral process expressed concerns over the results declared. They said that the results for District Four were not credible.
The Carter Center urged GECOM to return to a transparent verification process while the head of the Commonwealth observer team, Owen Arthur said the final result for the general elections was not tabulated and verified according to the established procedures and relevant legal and statutory provisions. He had urged all of the stakeholders to ensure full compliance with the law.
For their part, the envoys of the US, UK, Canada and the European Union said the full count of District Four was not completed and they questioned the credibility of the results released on that day.
Moreover, local observation body, the Private Sector Commission said it was appalled at the “blatant and deliberate attempts by GECOM to destroy our democracy” by derailing the counting process for the 2020 elections and attempts to subvert the will of the people.
“It is clear to all that the Chairman of GECOM is allowing without objection, the attempts to perpetuate election fraud under her watch,” the PSC said in a statement.
The fraudulent Mingo declaration of March 13 remains up to this point the official result for District Four.
Timeline for fraudulent Mingo declaration
Tuesday March 3rd 2020
● 9 PM Returning Officer for District Four, Clairmont Mingo closed tabulation activities saying he was tired. Tabulation of votes was scheduled to recommence at 9 am March 4th. Wednesday March 4th 2020
● 10 AM -District Four Returning Officer Mingo falls sick at the commencement of the tabulation exercise and was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital on a stretcher.
● The verification process was taken over by a clerk.
● Mingo was discharged and returned to the tabulation centre around noon.
● 1 PM – The process was disrupted over objections to the use of a spreadsheet supposedly compiled from SOPs in District Four.
● 6 PM – The process was recommenced.
● 9.30 PM – The process was stopped after GECOM staff complained of being tired.
● By the end of the night, GECOM’s staff were replaced and the tabulation exercised resumed. Thursday March 5th 2020
● 2 AM – Chaos erupted at the tabulation centre subsequent to a GECOM tabulation staffer reporting that he was tired and later being found in a room mysteriously working on a laptop. He was accused of altering the data tabulated. Police were called in to investigate the commotion and in the presence of party agents, the staff were grilled by investigators from the police force.
● After the commotion took place, the tabulation hit pause and was scheduled to resume at 9 AM. This never happened.
● 10 AM – Minister of Foreign Affairs Karen Cummings meets with international observers at the tabulation centre and threatens to revoke their accreditation.
● 2 PM – Shouts of No! emanated from the tabulation centre. Party agents from the opposition PPP and all other small parties incessantly shouted “No! No!” to prevent the declaration of the results by Mingo. No one could hear the declaration but it was done in full view of international and local observers and heads of the Western missions here.
● Following the declaration, Minister of Public Health and Chairman of the People’s National Congress Reform, Volda Lawrence traded words with PPP party agents. She had just signed the District Four declaration which she was not required to do.
● 3.15 PM – PPP executive Anil Nandlall arrived at the centre with Court Marshals to serve an injunction granted by Justice Navindra Singh to restrain GECOM and its agents from in any manner declaring the results of the March 2 polls.
● 5.25 PM – GECOM released to the media, results for District Four in the General and Regional Elections which if certified then would see the incumbent APNU+AFC winning the general elections by around 7,000 votes. Public Relations Officer Yolanda Ward forwarded without comment images of Statutory Declaration Form 24. The Form for District Four showed the incumbent APNU+AFC securing 136,335 votes while the Opposition People’s Progressive Party/Civic garnered 77,258, a difference of 59,077. Notably, Ward released the information almost one hour after the Returning Officer for District 4 was served with an injunction preventing him from declaring results without completing a verification process which has been stalled all day.
● 5.45 PM – Before the operations came to a close on March 5th at the Ashmins building, security for GECOM chairperson retired Justice Claudette Singh was put on high alert. Hours after the declaration by Mingo, persons were heard shouting “Free the Chairman”. A door leading to her office was pushed open.
● 6.30 PM – The police Tactical Services Unit stormed the tabulation centre and evicted all party agents who were guarding SoPs.
● 8 PM – At a press conference, six parties, including the opposition PPP/C, rejected the unverified results released by GECOM for District Four.
