President David Granger last evening endorsed a controversial report by Chief Election Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield which invalidated the votes of 25% of Guyanese electors.
During an interview on Benschop Radio, his third in recent weeks while ignoring other media, Granger said that the incumbent APNU+AFC continues to insist that the elections be decided not just on quantity of votes cast but on the quality of those votes.
“What we have found is that there is need for a deeper investigation into the anomalies and the irregularities that occurred countrywide. This has been done and has been a feature of the report the CEO presented to the Commis-sion,” he maintained, adding that “It is quite in order for the Chief Election Officer to rule that invalid votes cannot be counted as valid.”
“It is unacceptable for the CEO to present a report that doesn’t take into account the fact that these irregularities have occurred and have affected the validity of the votes…this is the reason why the Court of Appeal ruled votes must mean valid votes, if votes are fraudulent or if votes exceeds the number of persons on a list they cannot be valid votes,” the caretaker president declared. His statements are a repetition of claims made by his party during the National Recount none of which has been proven.
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.
Granger who has repeatedly stated that he will accept the results declared by the Chair of the Guyana Elections Commission Claudette Singh, attempted to argue that the Commis-sion was bound to make a declaration based on Lowenfield’s report rather than the certified results of the National Recount. Singh has said that the recount results will be used and she had instructed Lowenfield to prepare such a report. Lowenfield defied her and eventually presented his own version which triggered consternation from CARICOM Chair Mia Mottley who with other CARICOM leaders had brokered an accord between Granger and Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo for the recount.
“The stage which we are at now the CEO…has provided a report so we are moving into the third stage [where] that report has to be provided to the Com-mission and the Commis-sion has to review the report then the fourth and final stage is that the Chairman will make a declaration based on the report submitted by the CEO. It is a logical process it’s not an unlawful process not a disorderly process and that’s where we are… I hope by this weekend we can announce to the Guyanese people that the elections process has been brought to an end and a president will be declared,” he said.
Echoes
Granger’s statement echoes that of the APNU General Secretary, Joseph Harmon, who stated on Sunday during a radio broadcast that the Presi-dent would not concede.
“To those persons who are calling for Mr. Granger to concede, that is not going to happen,” Harmon said.
“[There is] a report in the Elections Commission showing all the valid votes and still people are calling for Mr. Granger to concede. Concede to what? Concede to who? What is he to concede to? It appears to me — and I’ll venture to say any right-thinking person — to be a most ridiculous and nonsensical proposition,” Harmon further explained.
Stabroek News had attempted to secure a comment from Granger on Harmon’s statement through Director of the Press and Publicity Unit, Ariana Gordon, but was unsuccessful.
According to Gordon she was “not in a position to speak on matters relating to the coalition”. She added that she would seek answers to the questions posed but up to press time no response had been received.
In a bizarre case of obfuscation, Granger, last evening attempted to bolster his argument with the report of the scrutinizing team from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).
He said that the team acknowledged the irregularities and recommended that there be an investigation into missing statutory documents, a total re-registration of electors, re- structuring of the Elections Commission and a political audit.
However, even as he accused persons of failing to read the CARICOM report in its entirety Granger completely ignored every aspect of the report not favourable to his party’s narrative.
He specifically never acknowledged that the team declared the results of the recount as acceptable.
“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…the people of Guyana expressed their will at the ballot box,” the team concluded.
The CARICOM team which was led by Cynthia Barrow-Giles, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government at the University of the West Indies (UWI), 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.”
Claims of a fraudulent elections were specifically referred to as a “false narrative” the promulgation of which GECOM facilitated by allowing the Observation Reports to be publicly read.
The team however declared that nothing they “saw up to the closing day of the recount suggested that the poll workers on March 2 conducted themselves in a manner which would indicate illegality or a deliberate intent to benefit a particular list of candidates over another.”
This assurance was however not enough for the President who had previously described CARICOM as the most legitimate interlocutor in the Guyana situation.
He claimed that the main opposition People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) meticulously tampered with votes in small batches until they arrived at a 15,000 vote lead.
The recount results had been certified by GECOM’s Secretariat. They show that the PPP/C’s list of candidates has secured 233,336 votes compared to the 217,920 garnered by the incumbent APNU+AFC coalition. Under that count, the PPP/C has won the March 2 General Elections by 15,416 votes.
Nandlall
Attorney and PPP executive Anil Nandlall last night waded into Granger over his remarks.
“President David Granger in his interview tonight has succeeded in plunging a tortured nation into further bewilderment and anguish. After his usual sanctimonious pledge of constitutional obedience, compliance with Orders of court, and binding himself to a declaration of the election results to be made by GECOM, he wandered off into his own frolic.
“He paints a picture of how complicated and complex Guyana’s electoral process is and offered that as the reason why foreigners may not understand it. The truth is that Mr. Granger does not want to accept the results produced by the process. The Guyana electoral process has been the same since 1992. It has produced results accepted by every previous politician. The accuracy of those results may have been disputed but the process was never. It is the same electoral process that produced victory for David Granger in 2015. So his attempt at making the process complex and complicated is a clumsy farce”, Nandlall declared.
He noted that Granger last night placed heavy reliance on the Caricom observer team report, quoting liberally from it but failed to quote the part that said that the allegations made by APNU+AFC were false and that the recount process was credibly and transparently done, and that the results generated from the process are valid and credible.
Nandlall added: “Granger further turned the law upside down in respect of the relationship between GECOM and the Chief Election Officer. He wrongly asserted that the Chief Election Officer’s report is binding on GECOM whatever that report contains. The truth is that the CEO is subordinate and subject to the directions of GECOM. Not the reverse. Therefore, the CEO can only act upon the directions of GECOM.
“His own commissioner, Vincent Alexander, claims that in 2011, he identified a flaw in the then CEO Gocool Boodoo’s report and the caused the Commission to reject that report and directed the then CEO to bring back a proper report. Well the law has not changed since. GECOM reserves the power to reject any fraudulent report presented by any Chief Election Officer”.
