Describing Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield as a “runaway train” in light of his recent actions, Presidential Candidate of A New and United Guyana (ANUG) Ralph Ramkarran says that Chair of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Claudette Singh will sooner or later have to take a stand.
Either dismiss or ignore Lowenfield were the options proffered by Ramkarran in his column in yesterday’s Sunday Stabroek. “Mr Lowenfield’s public declaration of his independence, orchestrated and/or supported by APNU+AFC, indicates that he is not going anywhere,” Ramkarran wrote.
Lowenfield last week submitted a report to GECOM which discards over 115,000 votes that were cast at the March 2nd polls and purports to award victory to the incumbent APNU+AFC. On Friday, he defended his decision saying that he has acted lawfully. The report has sparked local and international consternation.
Ramkarran was livid at Lowenfield’s “appalling and abysmal conduct” and noted that having remained publicly silent about his actions, the CEO has now said, under public pressure, that while the commission makes policy decisions and provides guidance, he has to execute his duties “as a constitutional officer, particularly in the conduct of elections.”
Ramkarran wrote that having “completely misconstrued his role, which is a statutory, not a constitutional one, and being fully supported by APNU+AFC, it is clear that Mr Lowenfield will insist on his right to tamper with the results of the recount, no matter what instructions he receives from the commission or the Chair, or no matter what is the decision of the CCJ [Caribbean Court of Justice].”
The matter is currently at the CCJ.
The ANUG leader said that Lowenfield’s statutory duty under section 96 of the Representation of the People Act is to report the results of the elections to the commission based on the figures of the Return-ing Officers, not on his own, manufactured, figures. “Under clause 12 of the Order of Recount, he has merely to prepare matrices of the statements of recount and a summary of the observation reports, not offer his ‘final credible result,’ different from the recount figures,” Ramkarran wrote.
According to the ANUG leader, in claiming constitutional independence, Lowenfield assumed the right to unilaterally reduce the recount figures by 60 per cent to show APNU+AFC winning the elections by a two-third majority and later, when “this appalling atrocity” was condemned, by 25 per cent showing the APNU+AFC winning the elections, this time by one seat. ”Abandoning his reliance on his right to give a ‘final credible result,’ he has now invoked the Court of Appeal in the case of Eslyn David v The Elections Commission and others, interpreting the decision that the word ‘votes’ mean ‘valid votes’ to justify his alteration of the recount results,” Ramkarran wrote.
“Mr Lowenfield, who is a statutory officer, is bound by section 18 of the Election Laws (Amendment) Act which states he and the Commissioner of Registration shall ‘be subject to the direction and control of the Commission,’ ‘notwithstanding any written law’ and by clause 15 of the Recount Order which provides that he remains “subject to the general supervisory power of the Commission.” He has no authority to operate outside the statutory framework, is not independent and must follow the instructions of the Chair,” Ramkarran argued.
In his column, the ANUG leader also highlighted the international response to Lowenfield’s actions. He pointed out that over the past few days, Barbados Prime Minister and Chair of CARICOM Mia Mottley accused Lowenfield of “gamesmanship.” He noted that Mottley applied the word ‘bizarre” to Guyana’s elections process. Representing CARICOM, which has been described by President David Granger as the “most legitimate interlocutor,” Mottley characterised the electoral shenanigans as “not our finest hour,” Ramkarran noted.
He highlighted too that US Assistant Secretary of State Michael Kozak has called for a conclusion of the electoral process and a declaration of the winner as has Nelson Mandela’s Elders Group that includes Mandela’s widow Graca Machel, former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and current chair Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland and UN Commissioner for Human Rights. Resident US, British, Canadian and European Union diplomatic heads in Guyana also called for a declaration based on the recount, Ramkarran observed.
He further noted that four US Senators, Jim Risch, Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee; Bob Menendez, Ranking Member; Marco Rubio, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere; and Ben Cardin, who had written Granger on May 12 encouraging a free, fair and transparent recount of the votes, issued another statement last week which called on Granger to “honour the will of the Guyanese people and concede.”
According to Ramkarran, while international concern and pressure mount, local responses are becoming more and more perverse. “Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo linked “foreign interference” in Guyana’s election to a plot to remove the Venezuelan government. Long known for the imaginative reach of his political analysis, rational people will somehow miss the connection between the US supporting free and fair elections in Guyana (clearly the PM is talking about the US) and a plot to overthrow the Maduro government,” he contended.
