President David Granger, once very vocal about the role of CARICOM in the National Recount has been silent on the report submitted last week by the three-person scrutinizing team which observed the process.
In its report submitted on June 15, the CARICOM team concluded that the National Recount of votes and by extension the March 2, 2020 general and regional elections were sufficiently transparent to reflect the will of the Guyanese people and form the basis for the declaration of the results.
Though they took note of the anomalies and irregularities identified by the incumbent APNU+AFC coalition, the team repeatedly stressed in their report that they did not witness anything which would render the recount and by extension the casting of the ballot on March 02, “so grievously deficient procedurally or technically, or sufficiently deficient to have thwarted the will of the people.”
In fact they argued that the “public utterances of some GECOM commissioners, political pundits and politicians may have sounded an ominous tone for the 2020 Elections with the partisan driven and distorted narrative on migrant voting, phantom voting and implied voter impersonation.”
More than a week after the June 15 submission of the report and extensive public reporting on its contents, President Granger has remained silent.
This is notable because only a day before the submission the President told reporters during a press conference at State House that CARICOM has been invited to validate the process.
Noting that CARICOM’s role was embedded in the gazetted order, Granger stressed that the Community had been tasked with establishing the credibility of the process.
“We didn’t ask them to do arithmetic but to determine if the process which took place on March 2 was credible or whether it was so badly flawed that the process was unacceptable,” the Head of State explained.
These words are a reiteration of the position Granger espoused on May 18 when he told reporters that he considered CARICOM a reliable partner in Guyana’s development which was competent to scrutinize the recount process.
“I am very confident in CARICOM’s integrity and ability and I would just like to repeat what the Ambassador of Barbados (to the OAS, Noel Lynch said) that CARICOM is the most legitimate interlocutor on the Guyana situation. I am inspired by that remark and I share the sentiment that CARICOM is the most important interlocutor on the Guyana situation,” Granger said after a visit to the recount centre.
While Granger has been mum on the report, officials of APNU+AFC have attacked it. Granger has also undermined the report by adopting the unfounded claims by his party that there had been numerous irregularities detected during the recount.
Caricom’s role in the process arose after its Chair, Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley intervened following an impasse over the District Four count and secured an agreement from Granger and Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo for a recount of the votes. Following the arrival of the team of observers, the mission was aborted after one of Granger’s candidates secured a court injunction halting the process. A second team supervised a painstaking 33-day recount beginning May 6th leading to the June 15 report.
