APNU/AFC’s election petitions lack merit – Attorney General

As the case management conference for the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) election petitions is set for Thursday, Attorney General Anil Nandlall is contending that they are without merit.
Nandlall made the comments on the sidelines of an event at State House on Tuesday. He noted that the Attorney General, as the legal representative of the Guyanese people, would be party to the proceedings and as such an application would be made to join.
“The Attorney General has an important role to play in protecting the public interest so the Attorney General will be a party. I have examined the petitions and, in my view, they lack merit. The first one in my view deals with a whole host of issues that have been already determined for example the constitutionality of the recount order, the constitutionality of Section 22 of the Elections Laws Amendment Act are issues that the courts have conclusively pronounced upon and in my view, they ought not to be relitigated,” he posited.
Nandlall added that the second petition deals specifically the allegations of voters’ fraud and misplaced statutory documents which he thinks were addressed during the actual counting of the ballots during the 33 days National Recount.
“I am confident that the petitions will be dismissed and hopefully they are heard and determined quickly and dismissed and disposed of,” the AG noted.
Acting Chief Justice Roxane George has set October 22 as the date when all parties in the election petition case will have to participate in setting timelines.
The petitioners in the first petition filed on August 31, 2020, are Heston Bostwick, an APNU/AFC Councillor at City Hall and Claudette Thorne. They both hail from Albouystown, Georgetown.
In this petition, the coalition attached the form that embattled former Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo used to declare the results for Region Four, which listed the total number of valid votes for all lists as 217,425 for which APNU/AFC received 136,057 votes and the PPP/C 77,231 votes.
In actuality, the results of the National Recount found that there was a total of 202,077 ballots cast in Region Four, with 116,941 for APNU/AFC and 80,920 for PPP/C. As it relates to the overall elections, the gazetted results show that 460,352 valid votes were cast, with 233,336 for the PPP/C and 217,920 for APNU/AFC.
The petitioners in the second election petition are Monica Thomas of Lot 58 Norton Street, Lodge, Georgetown, and Bernnan Joette Natasha Nurse of Lot N16-1079 Critchlow Street, Tucville, Georgetown.
They contend that during the period January to August 2020, they were employed at the Office of the Elections Agent as Assistants to Harmon, who was appointed as Election Agent for the APNU/AFC.
In the petition, representatives of all the political parties which contested the elections and Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield, himself before the courts on multiple charges, are listed as the respondents.
Further, the duo submitted that there were instances when the evidence of the polling activities was not recorded in the available poll books; instances when ballots cast were unstamped, and instances when evidence to validate the issuance of ballots to proxies were missing.
These missing documents were all cited in the case brought before the High Court by APNU supporter Misenga Jones in the ultimately futile attempt to overturn Recount Order 60 of 2020. However, the High Court had ruled that the recount was valid and the results must be used, notwithstanding any such missing documents.
The PPP/C has insisted that the High Court should first hear the election petition filed by the party sometime after it lost the 2015 General and Regional Elections. It said that it is only fair that its petition, which has languished in the courts for years under the APNU/AFC Government, be heard before the ones filed by the coalition.
In its preliminary report following the March 2020 General and Regional Elections, the Commonwealth observer team expressed concern at the delays of the High Court in dealing with the 2015 elections petition filed by PPP/C member Ganga Persaud.
Head of the Commonwealth Observer Mission, the late former Prime Minister of Barbados Owen Arthur had said, “We were informed, for example, that an elections petition filed by the PPP/C following the 2015 elections is still pending before the High Court”.