Contempt of court proceedings filed against RO, CEO and GECOM

Following the failure to comply with the recent High Court orders, contempt of court proceedings were filed on Thursday against the Returning Officer of Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), Clairmont Mingo; Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield, and the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM).

Acting Chief Justice Roxane George on Wednesday ordered, among other things, that the Returning Officer or Deputy Returning Officer commence compliance with Section 84 (1) of the Representation of People’s Act no later than 11:00h March 12, 2020.
However, this process did not start at the stipulated time and instead was suspended until 09:00h today for recommencement.
This led the private citizen, Reeaz Holladar, who had initiated the legal proceedings last week to file contempt of court proceedings, through his lawyer Anil Nandlall, on Thursday.
Guyana Times was told that the contempt matter was fixed for hearing at 10:30h today. The notice was served on GECOM Chair Retired Justice Claudette Singh. It was reported that both Mingo and Lowenfield were nowhere to be found for service.
Meanwhile, in a statement just after 18:00h on Thursday, Public Relations Officer of GECOM, Yolanda Ward, stated that the Region Four RO will resume the tabulation exercise today at his office which is housed in the GECOM Command Centre, located in the Ashmin’s Building, High and Hadfield Streets, Georgetown.
She also informed stakeholders who were present and approved by the Returning Officer on Thursday to be present at the appointed time to witness the count.
Prior to the court-ordered recommencement of the process, representatives from the various political parties and electoral observers, both local and overseas, were barred from accessing the RO’s office. Eventually, only one party representative and one observer were allowed in the room for the process, which Mingo attempted to use the controversial spreadsheet for, instead of Statements of Poll (SoPs) as catered for in the law.
In his Notice of Intent to file the contempt proceedings, Nandlall reminded the RO that the use of the spreadsheet is in violation of the Court Order handed down by the Chief Justice on Wednesday.
“…In violation of the aforesaid Order of Court, you refused to ascertain and add up the votes recorded in favour of the list of candidates in accordance with the Statements of Poll, but instead, chose to use a pre-prepared spreadsheet, as the basis for the ascertaining and adding up of the said votes… The above constitute flagrant violations of the Order of the Honourable Chief Justice,” the former Attorney General stated in the notice.
He further reminded that contempt of court is a criminal offence which attracts as a punishment and a term of imprisonment and aiding and abetting a contempt carries the same penalty as the contempt itself.
Nandlall went on to argue during a press conference later that afternoon that “If Parliament wanted a substitute to be used, Parliament would have said the ‘Statements of Poll or any other document or mechanism, appointed or approved by the Returning Officer in the exercise of his discretion’. That facility, that option is not in the legislation…”
He contended that even if a spreadsheet is permissible, then it should have been prepared in the presence of those the political parties so as to ensure that the information contained was extracted from the SoPs. He noted that once this is done and the data corresponds, his party would not object to the use of the spreadsheet.
In fact, this was done in the other nine regions during their tabulation process, several PPP/C agents confirmed at the press conference.
Meanwhile, Thursday’s objection to use of the spreadsheet saw the intervention of the GECOM Chair, who indicated to stakeholders that she was awaiting the copy of Chief Justice’s written judgement since she was only served with the Orders of the Court and will have to study the judgement before providing a way forward. Hence the suspension today.
But according to Nandlall, when a case is concluded, it is the order of the Court that binds the parties and not the written judgement.
“The written judgement is simply a chronology of the thinking of the judge as the judge arrives at the orders. You have things that are called obiter dicta, meaning things that are said by the way which are not part of the legal reasoning of the judge. So to claim that one needs to read the written judgement in order to obey the order of the Court is quite farcical and fanciful. And this is done by a judge of 30 years standing,” the former AG stressed.
Additionally, Nandlall contended that efforts are afoot to frustrating the process.
“…they now are trying to do everything within their power to frustrate the exercise,” he posited.