Although there was a rule by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) stating that no political party or any presidential candidates were allowed to have any meetings at the Ashmins building, which was the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Command Centre for the 2020 elections, then Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr Karen Cummings was seen inside the building in a room with the Deputy Chief Election Officer (DCEO) Roxanne Myers and a number of international observers on the day of a bomb scare.
This was stated on Thursday by GECOM commissioner Sase Gunraj and seen in a video which was presented as evidence to the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the elections yesterday.
When asked if he had seen Cummings on the day of the bomb threat, which was March 5, 2020, by Commission counsel Sophia Chote SC, Gunraj replied in the positive. “I saw Ms Cummings coming into the building, that is to say the Ashmins building. She proceeded to the second floor of the building…she was ushered into a room on that second floor by Roxanne Myers…,” he explained.
The second floor also held the offices of the GECOM commissioners and according to Gunraj, he was a few feet away and could have clearly seen in the room where he saw several observers inside locked away and conversing.
In the video, which was presented yesterday, Chote said that at the meeting, which Cummings seemed to be heading, she was speaking to the international observers about revoking their accreditation.
Based on a video of the meeting that had been circulated on social media, Cummings was asked if it was appropriate for her to be conducting a meeting in the GECOM building and had admitted that it was not but stressed that she merely passed because she heard “something” which she did not want to repeat there for ethical reasons. “They said that if you had to take away their accreditation, do so, but I said no, we can’t do so, I said,” the minister managed to say before being interrupted by observers exclaiming, “What? What? What?”
Her comments had caused an uproar among the observers, some of whom perceived them as a threat.
Meanwhile, as it relates to the bomb scare while Cummings and Myers were hosting the meeting, Gunraj said that the Chief Election Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield was the person who went to the commissioners and alerted them that he had received a bomb threat and advised them to exit the building.
The news was, however, never taken seriously by any of the commissioners. “I ignored it, personally. I ignored it and my comment was, ‘this is serious, what we are doing here is serious, and if there was a bomb then let it go, we have work to do,’” Gunraj recalled.
Furthermore, after descending outside to brief the media on what was occurring, Gunraj said that he saw what appeared to be Lowenfield’s vehicle leaving the building.
“While addressing the media I saw a vehicle assigned to the CEO leaving the Ashmins building parking lot and that vehicle was followed by a vehicle that normally escorted the vehicle of the CEO,” he said.
