People’s Progressive Party\Civic (PPP\C) member Bibi Anieshaw Mohamed, who was the Tabulation Officer for the party during the March 2020 elections, last Monday testified that Guyana Elections Commission Information Technology (IT) Officer Enrique Livan attempted to change the figures on some of the Statements of Polls (SOPs) as has been alleged by many.
According to Mohamed, no spreadsheet was initially used for the verification of the SOPs and that it was not until Livan had been found in the room that suddenly a spreadsheet surfaced in the tabulation room.
She told the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the controversial elections process, “If in fact we were to follow the correct procedure and open the statement of polls in front of everyone and see that statement of poll for the very first time, it would be amiss that a spreadsheet could have been populated with the said statement of polls because you would have to have seen that before to populate or get a spreadsheet done with the same numbers with those envelopes.”
Mohamed recounted the events of March 4, 2020, when she was instructed to go the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Command Centre at the Ashmins building at High and Hadfield Streets where she said she helped fix the cables on an Acer brand laptop computer since Livan was complaining that it was not working.
“After he tabulated about three boxes he said that the system was no longer working to which he pointed out that he would need someone to come and fix it and he can’t get anyone. At that point…I raised my hand and said ‘I can fix it.’ I then got up and proceeded to where he was and I just had to secure some cables from the laptop and it was working again.”
The woman said that shortly after she fixed the cables on the computer, Livan complained that he was tired and got up and proceeded to a room with the laptop and the flash drive that were being used. She said that everyone was waiting in the tabulation room since they thought he was returning shortly, but he never did. This prompted everyone to get up and go to the room that he went into.
Mohamed said that she was directly at the side of the person who pushed opened that door and she saw Livan working on the computer while two other females were also in the room with him. She said that one of the women was about to collect some papers from a printer in the room which had appeared to have been printing from the computer that Livan was working on.
“Everyone was concerned [as] we thought he was returning. We did not know what happened within that minute but he did not return and there was a search for him… we all left the room and went to another room and proceeded to open the door where mister Livan was found sitting… he was evidently working on the laptop and there was a flash drive on the desk, it was silver and black and there was the black one [flash drive] that was used in the room plugged into the laptop that he took.”
Questioned by Retired Justice Carl Singh as to whether she saw any cables connecting the computer to the printer, Mohamed replied in the negative but raised the possibility that the printer could have been connected wirelessly to the laptop.
She also suggested that the paper was a product of the laptop that Livan had been working on, “because printing was occurring at the same time, he was in an alert mode as if he was working on the computer… it was directly in front of him… it was open… there was no other computer in the room so if something was being printed it would have to be from that laptop,” contended the witness.
Mohamed said that shortly after Livan was allegedly found working on the computer, the police were called in and he denied to them taking the laptop into the room and said that he had a Dell brand laptop in his possession.
“He said that the laptop he was working on or the laptop that was in front of him was his and he did not take the laptop from the [tabulation] room… during that confrontation they also went to verify whether the laptop was in the room like he said because he said he did not remove it and the laptop that we found in the room was Dell laptop compared to an Acer that was being used initially and that we found him with in the room.”
Asked again by Singh how it was possible for Livan to suddenly have a Dell laptop in front of him and not an Acer laptop anymore, she replied with uncertainty that someone in the room might have switched the laptops when no one was looking.
Livan was charged with fraud in August 2020.
