Yesterday, GECOM CEO Keith Lowenfield presented back to the Commission his tabulation of the ten certified Statements of Recount (SORs) provided to him by GECOM, along with a summary of “Observations” that had been made during the recount. GECOM is required by law to make a declaration of the results of the General and Regional Elections that were held more than three months ago, on March 2. This declaration must be made by Tuesday.
Last week, PPP/C General Secretary Bharrat Jagdeo articulated the position of his party on that declaration, and most legal scholars concur on what that declaration should be based: “The Presidential Candidate on the list that has the majority vote is deemed the President of Guyana, and the Chair shall declare him as President. So, Article 177 (2) (b) of our Constitution is quite clear. It has been established now that the PPP’s list has the most votes, and therefore Irfaan Ali is already deemed the President of Guyana.”
Article 177 (2) (b) states: “…where there are two or more Presidential candidates, if more votes are cast in favour of the list in which a person is designated as Presidential candidate than in favour of any other list, that Presidential candidate shall be deemed to be elected President, and shall be so declared by the Chairman of the Elections Commission…”
What the Opposition Leader was emphasising was that this article needs “no gloss” or explanation – as the CCJ had ruled on Art 106 (6) where the Cabinet and the President should resign after a No Confidence Motion.
But in Guyanese politics, once the PNC – in whatever guise – is involved, matters Constitutional or otherwise are never clear cut if they stand in the way of the PNC retaining power. Over the last five years, PNC leader David Granger has shown that he is in total agreement with Humpty Dumpty, who declared expansively, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less”. Never mind the dictionary or the Constitution.
In the instance of Art 106 (6) cited above, the Constitution was quite pellucid, or so one thought, after the equivalent “No Confidence Motion” clause had been operationalised in the House of Commons and other parliamentary jurisdictions: “The Cabinet including the President shall resign if the Government is defeated by the vote of a majority of all the elected members of the National Assembly on a vote of confidence.” The PNC, however, chose to give the word “majority” its own peculiar meaning as it applies to the members of our 65-member National Assembly. They took it all the way to the CCJ, to be told ruefully by the eminent jurists of the CCJ that the clause “needed no gloss”, as they insisted that the Cabinet and President should resign and elections be held within three months.
From the (most recent) pronouncements of David Granger and his party, it is clear they are insisting that Art 177 is not as clear as what the words declare. After giving equivocal signals on the blanket “irregularities” his party agents at the recount were alleging concerning “migrant” and “dead persons” “voting”; Disciplines Forces ballots deliberately unstamped to disenfranchise them; persons voting without affidavits of identification; missing ancillary polling documents etc., David Granger on Friday evening declared unequivocally that these will have to be evaluated, since “there are too many anomalies to be ignored, and that is the reason for the recount.”
But the last assertion is a blatant falsehood, since the recount was agreed by him and brokered by Caricom leaders on March 14, when Mingo’s manipulation of the Reg 4 SOPs was denounced by the High Court. From Granger’s statements and those of several of his – in the words of former Barbados PM Owen Arthur – “utensils”, it is evident they will parse the word “votes” in Art 177 and qualify it with the word “credible” to take to the courts the GECOM Chair’s declaration that the PPP has won.
