Keith Lowenfield defends compromised GECOM operative

…calls conduct “diligent and professional” despite marked sloth at assigned station

Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield on Wednesday defended the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) information technology staffer who was implicated in the shenanigans taking place by Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo in the days following the March 2, General and Regional Elections.

Lowenfield, in a public statement on Wednesday, said the staffer — Enrique Livan — continues to conduct “himself and execute his functions in a diligent and professional manner.”
The Opposition Peoples Progressive Party this past week lodged a complaint with the Commission, since it was alleged that the compromised staffer is the person who left with a flash drive containing sensitive election information at the Ashmin’s Building, High and Hadfield Streets, Georgetown, and was later caught in a room working with the flash drive.
He has since been placed as the supervisor for the counting station responsible for the votes cast in Region Four, effectively overseeing the recount of the votes for which he was implicated as part of the plot to rig the 2020 elections.
The PPP/C had demanded an explanation, since his promotion had been perceived in some quarters as being linked to the visit one day earlier by ‘caretaker’ President David Granger at the recount venue at the Arthur Chung Conference’ Centre (ACCC).
Granger, at the time, met with the Secretariat’s management team, including Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield.
The Chief Elections Officer said the reports in the media are believed to have emanated from a letter sent to the Chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission by a political party, which letter was subsequently circulated on social media. He explained that all workstation staff are on rotation; as such, Livan was assigned as supervisor of a recount workstation for District Four.
GECOM Public Relations Officer (PRO) Yolanda Ward had on Monday denied that the promotion of the IT staff had anything to do with the President’s visit, and had said that the appointment was in fact made out of necessity.
Ward told reporters encamped in the makeshift media centre outside of the venue that the staff member had to be moved to the position of workstation supervisor since there had been two other individuals that had been functioning in that capacity from the commencement of the exercise.
She told the media representatives that one of those persons was the Returning Officer for Region One (Barima-Waini) and that he has since left to return to Moruca for a week.
This, she said, led to the need for “that position to be filled with a supervisor.”
Providing a defense for the IT staff, the GECOM CEO on Wednesday said that on March 5 last, “Livan was tabulating votes cast for lists of candidates for District 4 when counting agents accused him of stealing a laptop and flash drive and demanded to see the information therein.”
According to the statement from the Office of the Chief Elections Officer, Lowenfield was subsequently called in “after accusations and assaults were meted out to Mr Livan.”
The CEO’s statement said, too, that the Guyana Police Force also appeared to deal with the alleged theft.
Lowenfield has since affirmed that as a staffer, Livan could not be accused of theft of GECOM’s equipment, and that he had facilitated a verification of the information on the computer and flash drive.
PPP/C Election Agent, party Executive Secretary Zulfikar Mustapha, in a strongly worded missive to the GECOM Chairperson, had accused Livan, since his promotion to station supervisor, of “deliberate sloth.”
The party, in its complaint to GECOM, had pointed out that on Monday, the workstation which the man was appointed to supervise completed recounting a single ballot box between 08:00 and 13:00h.
The party noted that the workstation “is recounting votes from District 4, an electoral district whose recount of the votes has been markedly the slowest of all the regions.”
Mustapha, in the letter, remarked that while a total of 1749 boxes remain to be recounted, 726 or over 40 per cent of these are from Region Four, and “it is our firm view that there is a deliberate sloth” in the counting of the ballots for that district.