“Shockingly brazen attempts” to derail the ascertaining of votes was how the Commission of Inquiry into the March 2nd general elections yesterday described the conduct of three top electoral officers but it was notably silent on the performance of the chair of GECOM.
Shortly after the handing over of the report to President Irfaan Ali by Chairman of the inquiry Justice of Appeal (Ret)
Stanley John, the document was released to the public.
It delivered a withering attack on the then Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield, his deputy Roxanne Myers and District Four Returning Officer, Clairmont Mingo who had had their contracts terminated by the Guyana Elections Com-mission in the wake of the five-month wait for results in 2020.
All three had declined to testify before the inquiry and they are presently facing a host of charges before the magistrate’s court.
“In summary, our inquiry reveals that there were, in fact, shockingly brazen attempts by Chief Election Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield, Deputy Chief Election Officer (DCEO) Roxanne Myers and Returning Officer (RO) Clairmont Mingo to derail and corrupt the statutorily prescribed procedure for the counting, ascertaining and tabulation of votes of the March 2nd election, as well as the true declaration of the results of that election, and that they did so – to put it in unvarnished language of the ordinary man – for the purpose of stealing the election”, the report said.
Later, the report added that after careful consideration and analysis of the evidence before it, it was its considered view that the trio was principally responsible for clear and deliberate attempts to frustrate, obstruct and subvert the ascertainment of votes in electoral district No. 4.
The report then laid out its reasons.
Regarding CEO Lowen-field, it said that prior to the elections he met with international observers and party agents among others and explained to them:
1. That the ascertainment and tabulation of votes cast was going to be by a comparative examination of SOPs in the possession of GECOM, with those in the possession of political party agents.
2. That ascertainment and tabulation of votes would be undertaken expeditiously.
3. During the night of the 4th March, 2020 the CEO assured party agents and observers that the ascertainment and tabulation process would resume at 9:00 a.m. on that morning.
“Of course, as we have already seen, the matters promised at 1 and 2 above were not honoured. There was no 9:00 a.m. resumption on the 4th March 2020. We have not heard any evidence of any explanations for these omissions and failures, nor of any apology, as a matter of courtesy, coming from the CEO to the waiting and expectant party agents and observers.
“Additionally, the CEO made many other statements which, even if made with the best intentions, turned out to be misleading. For example, the evidence before us was that on 4th March 2020, after a GECOM meeting which immediately ordered the discontinuance of the use of a spreadsheet in the ascertainment and tabulation process and reaffirmed the use of SOPs for that process, the CEO told party agents and observers that, among other things, GECOM had decided after an interruption, that the tabulation process would continue into the night, for as long as it took to complete the process. This was an empty undertaking which was feebly honoured and we are of the view that the general conduct of the CEO must have seriously eroded the trust of the Guyanese people in him”, the report said.
It added that Lowenfield well knowing that GECOM had specifically decided that the approved method for the ascertaining and tabulation of votes cast for the respective competing political parties was to be by the comparative examination of SOPs, nevertheless, on the 4th March 2020, approved the use of a spreadsheet which turned out to be a document, the information on which was substantially inconsistent with that on the SOPs in the possession of party agents.
“By referring to the spreadsheet as an “administrative document” the CEO was in our view, conveying the impression that the spreadsheet was a GECOM approved document, which it was not”, the report said.
On being called before GECOM in relation to the use of a spreadsheet in the ascertainment and tabulation process, the CEO told the commissioners of GECOM, that the use of the spreadsheet was expedient and efficient. He did not tell the commissioners that the efficiency of the ascertainment and tabulation process had been established the day before when some 323 SOPs had been verified through extended hours of work by the comparative use of SOPs as had been decided upon by GECOM.
The inquiry report said that he also did not tell the commissioners that he was faced with complaints by party agents that the spreadsheet that was being used, and the use of which he was encouraging and supporting, bore significant errors.
At one point when it was recognized by party agents that the results recorded on the spreadsheet that were being used by GECOM staff carried votes for the APNU+AFC party that were over and above the votes recorded for that party on SOPs in the possession of party agents, and a corresponding decrease in votes for the PPP/C party, as against what was recorded for that party on the SOPs of party agents, an observer, Rosalinda Rasul approached CEO Lowenfield and asked him for a copy of the spreadsheet, the use of which he had insisted on.
“Ms. Rasul explained the CEO’s response was to walk away from her but not before saying to her `Don’t do this to me.’”
Rasul’s testimony was heavily relied on in the inquiry report.
“We wondered what to make of those words. Was it that the CEO thought Ms. Rasul a nuisance? Was it that he thought that meeting her request was an onerous task? Or was it that his response was uttered after his immediate recognition that the spreadsheet was deliberately “engineered” to carry false statistics and that the spreadsheet, if put in the hands of persons unknown to him or whom he could not trust would be damning evidence of wrongdoing in relation to the ascertainment and tabulation of the votes for electoral district No. 4? Whatever he might have meant, the CEO, by his overall conduct, certainly opened himself to the criticism that the spreadsheet was introduced for ulterior motives and not for efficiency. Indeed, the use of the spreadsheet caused major disruptions and slowed the tabulation process”, the report said.
The report said that the CEO is on record as having expressed his view that the CARICOM supervised national recount, accepted as credible and accurate in the reports from all the observer teams, did not represent the will of the people.
“We did not see this concern manifested when the spreadsheet which he authorised was met with howls of objection from political parties and observers, or when clear discrepancies in votes being called out were brought to his attention”, the inquiry report stated.
“We find that the conduct and actions of CEO Lowenfield, in relation to the discharge of his statutory duties prescribed by sections 96 and 97 of the ROPA, were a brazen attempt to prevent GECOM declaring the true results of the elections of 2nd March, 2020. His conduct was – to borrow the words of former Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding, Head of the OAS Observer Mission to Guyana – a transparent attempt to alter the results of an election.
“As the chief election officer of Guyana, his conduct dealt a deep, pernicious body blow to the integrity of Guyana’s electoral system and cherished democratic values and must justly and forcefully be condemned as the ultimate betrayal of trust reposed in the highest election official in the land by the people of Guyana”, the report asserted.
In relation to Deputy Chief Election Officer (DCEo) Roxanne Myers, the report said that the commissioners closely scrutinized the evidence relating to the DCEO.
“It is clear to us that on the 4th March 2020, the DCEO took a decision to limit the number of political party agents and observers for the ascertainment and tabulation process at the Ashmin’s Building. The reason she gave was that GECOM staff did not feel safe with many people in the room. We note, however, that on the 3rd March 2020, no one from GECOM complained of intimidation or feeling unsafe. We are of the view that this was a unilateral decision by Ms. Myers taken as an administrative measure, for no justifiable reason but intended to limit the number of witnesses to GECOM’s ascertainment and tabulation procedures.
“On the 4th March 2020, Ms. Myers repeatedly conveyed what turned out to be misleading information on the time of restart of the ascertainment and tabulation process for that day. Even though at the close of that exercise on the 3rd March 2020, the RO had advised that the exercise would resume on the 4th March 2020, at 9:00 a.m. It was not until 11:00 a.m. that the DCEO went to the tabulation room to announce that the process would soon start. Thirty minutes later the RO was seen being lifted out to an ambulance and was taken away. Fifteen minutes later, the DCEO announced that the RO was fine and would return in 45 minutes. All of this proved to be wrong – even misleading – information that came from the DCEO”, the reports said.
The DCEO, in most of her interactions with party agents, appeared unhelpful and had a hostile and abrasive bearing, evident in the video footage placed in evidence before us. This was seen when she asked party agents and observers to leave the tabulation room saying, “Take your rubbish with you and leave”.
The report said that on the occasion of a report of a bomb being placed in Ashmin’s building, she told party agents, observers and diplomats, “Y’all get out the room. There’s a bomb in the building.” She however never left the building. GECOM Commissioner Sase Gunraj told the inquiry that on one occasion as he went up the stairs to the second floor to meet the Returning Officer, DCEO Myers stood in his way and blocked his path to prevent him from getting into contact with the RO.
“However, we saw video evidence of a minister of the then APNU+AFC government visiting the Ashmin’s Building to have a meeting with diplomats and observers. The minister was chaperoned into the room where the meeting was to be held by the DCEO. At one point, the DCEO received a call on her phone which was apparently intended for the APNU/AFC minister, and so she passed her phone to the minister. The difference in her demeanour with the minister sharply contrasted with her demeanour with party agents and observers who had a legitimate interest in being at the Ashmin’s Building. Interestingly, the Chairperson of GECOM told us of being completely unaware that such a meeting by a government minister was to be held in a GECOM building”, the report stated.
On the 5th March 2020, the report said that the DCEO seemed to have “developed an obsession” with getting party agents, observers and others out of the room.
“We believe that the bomb threat which turned out to be a hoax (given that the police had determined the objects handed over to them by the DCEO were completely harmless contraptions) was a contrivance, an artifice created by persons bent on manipulating the outcome of the elections”, the report declared.
While no one had seen the RO on the morning of 5th March 2020, the report said that the DCEO, at around 12.30 p.m. that day, was assuring party agents and observers that the ascertainment and tabulation process would soon resume. Yet, not much longer afterwards, RO Mingo who had not completed the ascertainment of votes for his district, went to the tabulation room and announced that he was going to make a declaration of the district No. 4 results in accordance with his spreadsheet count.
“This was an incredible occurrence in our view. It is difficult to accept that when DCEO Myers went into the tabulation room, minutes before the RO gave notice of his intention to make a declaration of results, to herself announce that the tabulation process would soon resume, that she was unaware of the RO’s intention. We say so because we believe the evidence of ACP Thomas that he had been told by Senior Superintendent Azore, that Ms. Myers had advised him that a very important announcement was to be made that day. The important announcement turned out to be the RO’s unlawful declaration”, the inquiry report said.
It added: “The assurance of the DCEO to party agents was, in our view, misleading and was most likely intended to placate and appease the party agents and observers who had been waiting in the tabulation room for a protracted period of time. The DCEO, we believe, knew that the RO was going to make a declaration and that no further tabulation exercise was to be undertaken”.
The report further stated: “…from the totality of the evidence surrounding the RO’s declaration, that there appears to be such collusion and collaboration between senior GECOM officials as to likely amount to a conspiracy to make what was undoubtedly a premature and unlawful declaration of falsified results which showed the APNU/AFC party as the winner of electoral district No. 4. This, we believe, was the ultimate goal of the CEO, the DCEO and the RO.
“The collusion and collaboration between these senior officials of GECOM was evident at the time of the declaration itself. While the RO was making the declaration, the DCEO was looking on from the floor above”. At that time, the report said that she knew or ought to have known that the RO’s spreadsheet was not a true record of the total votes cast for electoral district No. 4.
In relation to RO Mingo, the report said that he supervised what can only be described as a successful ascertainment and tabulation of the votes cast for competing political parties in electoral district No. 4. The methodology used by the RO on that day was the comparative use of SOPs, which he had advised party agents and observers would be the methodology to be employed. He then apparently fell ill on the 4th March, 2020. Replacement staff were identified to continue the ascertainment and tabulation process. His assistant, the report said, told one of the GECOM staff, identified to continue the ascertainment and tabulation process in his absence, that the process would no longer be done through the comparative use of SOPs but rather by the use of a spreadsheet.
The RO was not seen for the entire day. He returned on 5th March 2020 and, on that day, he proceeded to make a public declaration of the results of the elections in electoral district No. 4. At the point in time when he made the declaration, the report said that:
“1. The RO knew or ought to have known that the ascertainment and tabulation of the votes for electoral district No. 4 had not been completed.
“2. The RO knew or ought to have known that, pursuant to the provisions of section 84(1) of the ROPA, he was required to ascertain and tabulate the total votes cast for each competing political party in electoral district No. 4. Further, he knew or ought to have known that the total votes cast in that district had not been ascertained and tabulated by him and that he was therefore acting in violation of the law by making a declaration at the time he did.
“3. Following a decision of the chief justice which gave clear directions that the ascertainment and tabulation of the votes for electoral district No. 4 had to be done through the comparative use of SOPs, the RO, in complete violation of the order of the chief justice, resorted to the use of a broadsheet of numbers, which he said had been extracted from SOPs”.
The inquiry report further noted that the RO ignored all advice that by so doing he was acting in breach of the court’s order andoffered no comfort to party agents and observers who sought to question him on the integrity of the information on his broadsheet.
“Very significantly, he made no response to a request to inspect the SOPs he claimed were used in the compilation of his broadsheet data. Indeed, we are satisfied that the RO and his staff defiantly resisted all efforts by party agents and observers to scrutinize GECOM’s SOPs”, the report added.
On 13th March 2020, the report said that the RO continued the use of his broadsheet in a changed location and in a room where tables previously provided for the convenience of party agents and observers had been withdrawn and were no longer available to them. On the same day, the report said that he allowed himself to be influenced by APNU+AFC party representative Carol Joseph, “who was conducting herself in a wholly inappropriate manner, and as a result recanted on his earlier undertaking to party agents and observers to restart the ascertainment and tabulation process in the interest of transparency”.
The report listed a series of other points why it accused Mingo.
*On the said 13th March, 2020, under the supervision of RO Mingo, GECOM staff called numbers from his broadsheet very rapidly, making it very difficult to follow. A pattern was however discerned which was that votes for the APNU/AFC, party when compared with the votes recorded on SOPs in the possession of party agents, showed that the votes for that party were increased, while votes for the PPP/C showed a decrease in the number of votes actually received by that party.
* It took another intervention from the chief justice to put a halt to the RO’s use of the broadsheet. We construe his exhortation to his staff to “keep calling those numbers” when he left to attend before the chief justice, as a manifestation of his intention and his desire to complete the process with the use of his broadsheet and secure a declaration of a win for the APNU/AFC party in reliance on the falsified figures on his broadsheet.
*. The resumption of the ascertainment and tabulation process at GECOM headquarters over the period 12th/13th March, 2020 can best be described as a charade and was a process which was not attended by procedures that were open, transparent and fair. On 12th March, 2020 the RO indicated he would be calling the numbers from a spreadsheet. This was a complete deviation from the ruling of the chief justice who had emphasized that transparency was best achieved by full compliance with the statutorily prescribed procedures, that is by the comparative use of SOPs. On the 13th March 2020, as a result of intense objections to his 12th March, 2020 methodology, the RO switched to reading out results from what he said were SOPs which were fleetingly projected onto an undulating cloth screen (which some described as a bedsheet) which made scrutiny of these documents very difficult, if not impossible. The authenticity of these documents was in doubt. The figures on them were in instances altered in favour of the APNU/AFC party and the RO continued to stoutly resist all efforts by party agents and observers to examine the documents he claimed to be SOPs.
*. The RO, late in the night of 13th March, 2020, prepared and signed a statutorily prescribed form bearing the results of his ascertainment and tabulation of the results of electoral district No. 4 which was to be transmitted to the CEO. This was followed by a disturbing occurrence which suggests collusion and collaboration with APNU/AFC party representative Ms. Carol Joseph. We have found no requirement, as a matter of law, for any political party agent to sign the form that was to be transmitted to the CEO. We conclude therefore that permitting the signature of the APNU/AFC agent, Ms. Carol Joseph, was an effort by the RO to legitimize his highly unlawful conduct in the ascertainment and tabulation of the results of the elections in electoral district No. 4 and as an endorsement by the APNU/AFC party of the RO’s unjustified and wrongful declaration of their victory in electoral district No. 4.
The inquiry headed by retired Trinidadian Justice of Appeal John and including former Chancellor of the Guyana Judiciary Carl Singh and Justice of Appeal Godfrey Smith also called for reform of the Guyana Elections Commission.
“As it stands, the structure of GECOM is, at its core, politicized, making it difficult for it to operate with any efficiency or effectiveness. Consideration should be given to amending this to allow for more balanced participation from other organizations or professionals with technical expertise thereby reducing the politicization of the electoral process.
“The Carter Center noted in its report on the 2001 elections, “As part of electoral reform efforts, Guyana should give careful consideration to alternative models, possibly reducing or eliminating political party representation and increasing the role of independent members of civil society and professional experts”.
It is unclear why given its terms of reference the Commission of Inquiry did not comment on the conduct of the GECOM Chair, justice retired Claudette Singh on March 5th when the first illegal declaration was made. Singh had been accused of not taking any measures to stop Mingo. Later in the day she was found ensconced in a room which did not have door handles. She has never satisfactorily explained what happened that day and when she testified before the inquiry the commissioners appeared perplexed by her conduct that day.
In a surprise appearance on December 8 last year before the elections inquiry, Singh said she locked herself away in a room at a crucial juncture on March 5th 2020 when the illegal declaration was being made by Mingo.
Deeming her actions “odd”, Commissioner, Justice Smith described it as Singh abandoning her post at a critical juncture during the elections.
“To say you couldn’t be bothered seems odd because you are the Chair and you are in the middle of a very serious situation. I simply want to know, at that point did you call other Commissioners and say look, I am feeling stressed, let’s meet together and weather the storm, I am not taking this on, on my own. Did that occur to you or you just preferred to shut yourself away?” Justice Smith asked Singh.
Singh briefly responded that at that time, the Commissioners had left the building.
Singh said she was eventually escorted out of the building by Senior Superintendent, Phillip Azore.
Witnesses who appeared before the inquiry were: Vishnu Persaud, Edgar Thomas, Jonathan Yearwood, Dr. Josh Kanhai, Lenox Rono’Dall Shuman, Rawle Aaron, Ronald Edward Stuart, Sasenarine Singh, Aneal Giddings, Rosalinda Rasul, Paul Jaisingh, Gerald Gouveia, Charles Ramson, Junior Blair, Elston Baird, Ronald Ali, Sase Gonraj, Bibi Anieshaw Mohamed, Guy Nurse, Alexandra Bowman, Claudette Singh, Leslie Albert James, Cristal Robinson, Maxine Graham, Zulfikar Mustapha and Mohabir Anil Nandlall.
The following witnesses were summoned and either failed to appear or appeared before the commission and invoked their right not to incriminate themselves: Shefern February, Denise Babb-Cummings, Carolyn Duncan, Michelle Miller, Volda Ann Lawrence, Carol Joseph, Dr. Karen Cummings, Keith Lowenfield, Clairmont Mingo, Phillip Azore, Enrique Alexander Livan, Nicola Denise Trotman and Roxanne Myers.
