Carter Center blocked from returning to observe recount

…observer mission says Govt yet to grant it permission to fly in

During its previous stay in Guyana, the Carter Center did not mince words in declaring the March 2 General and Regional Elections as lacking credibility. Now, the Carter Center observer mission is finding its way back to Guyana to oversee the recount blocked by the Government of Guyana.

This was revealed in a short statement on its social media account on Saturday and it comes even as the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) gets ready to announce a start date for the recount.
With Guyana’s airport on lockdown due to COVID-19, the Center said it has been unsuccessful in getting permission from the Government to fly into the country.
“The Carter Center is trying to get an observer on a Monday flight to Georgetown to observe the recount but has so far been unsuccessful in getting approval from the Government of Guyana,” the Carter Center Guyana Election Observation Mission said on Twitter.
Meanwhile, Canada’s High Commissioner to Guyana, Lilian Chatterjee, also used her social media account – Twitter – where she expressed hope that the Carter Center can eventually be granted the permission it needs from the Government.
“[Canada] funded the Carter Center Election Observer Team in Guyana. I hope Guyana will allow them to return to complete their task. The Carter Center has earned the respect of Guyanese citizens & political parties for decades,” Chatterjee also indicated.
On Friday, the Caribbean Community (Caricom) high-level observation team comprising of Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Cynthia Barrow-Giles, Commissioner of the Antigua and Barbuda Electoral Commission, John Jarvis and Deputy Supervisor of Elections of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Sylvester King, arrived in Guyana to oversee the recount.
Caricom’s Secretary General Irwin LaRoque had sought and was granted permission by National COVID-19 Task Force (NCTF) Chairman, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo to fly in the team, within days.
After Saturday’s tour of the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, both People’s Progressive Party (PPP) representative Anil Nandlall and A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) representative David Patterson had expressed appreciation for the presence of Caricom in Guyana to oversee the recount, while Nandlall had gone further in expressing hope that the Carter Center itself can return to Guyana.
When the Carter Center’s observation mission in Guyana was here for the March 2 polls, the team was led by American lawyer Jason Carter, the grandson of former US President Jimmy Carter, and former Senegal Prime Minister Aminata Toure.
By March 20, the Carter Center had withdrawn from Guyana in the wake of discredited declarations from GECOM’s Returning Officer for Region Four, Clairmont Mingo, the widespread criticism from international and local observers of the lack of credibility in the process and the overall break down in political stability.
The observer mission had also cited specific threats against the international community and being impeded from doing its work by APNU/AFC supporters as reasons for their withdrawal from the process.

NCTF for political purposes
The PPP/C has meanwhile long levelled accusations against the NCTF for being used for political purposes. They have often cited the fact that the Task Force, using coronavirus as its rationale, sought to impose a 14-day quarantine on observers coming into the country.
In addition, the Task Force had also ordered GECOM not to conduct the recount beyond 17:00h, in light of the 18:00h curfew. After much criticism from the political Opposition and other groups, caretaker President David Granger stepped in and overturned the stipulations set out by his caretaker Prime Minister.