Election CoI to resume on November 28

…on course for January 2023 completion

The Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the 2020 General and Regional Elections, which took a break over a week ago following the testimonies of several witnesses, is expected to resume its work from November 28 and continue until the middle of December.
This was revealed by CoI Secretary Javeed Shadick, in an interview with the media. Shadick explained that as the evidence unfolds, they may need to call back witnesses to clarify their testimonies, or even get more witnesses.
“It was taken to a good point, to pause, gather as much as we can and then, during this period, we’ve been working on speaking to the witnesses who’ve (testified), see if there is more information that they may have gotten,” Shadick said.
Shadick added that when the proceedings resume, they will be able to go in depth into more testimony. He also noted that the CoI is on track for its previously announced completion in January of 2023.
The last day the CoI was held, November 10, saw testimony from Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) Chief Executive Officer Sase Singh, who was a scrutineer during that period and Information Technology (IT) Manager Aneal Giddings.
Singh told the Commission that he was a supernumerary agent for the PPP/C and on March 4, 2020, after former Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo took ill and had to be escorted from the Region Four Command Centre at the Ashmins building by medical officials, the then Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield provided two new Deputy Returning Officers (DROs) to continue the verification process.
However, Singh recalled that there was a “fundamental difference” with the process after the two GECOM officials were using pre-prepared spreadsheets and not the SoPs, as was done prior, to verify the votes. He said that Lowenfield had explained that this new method would add efficiency to the process.
But he disclosed that he had no idea what was on the spreadsheets, how they were prepared, by whom, using which data and when. Despite objections by the agents from the various political parties, Singh said the GECOM officials continued using the spreadsheets to reconcile their figures with that of the SoPs in possession of the party agents and observers present.
Copies of these SoPs are given to agents of political parties and accredited observers at the polling station after votes are counted. The stakeholders then use their copies to verify figures being used by the Returning Officers to ascertain the votes from each district.
During this verification process, however, stakeholders continuously observed discrepancies between the figures being called out from the spreadsheets and those contained in 17 out of 21 SoPs verified. According to Singh, this led to loud outbursts and objections by the party agents, resulting in CEO Lowenfield intervening.
He noted that while Lowenfield did not enquire from the DROs where the figures on the spreadsheets were derived from, he did conduct an exercise with a sample of three SoPs from the 21 and reverted to the original procedure during which the discrepancies with the spreadsheet numbers were confirmed.
Giddings recalled that on March 5, 2020, at about 10:45h, he and his staff in the Tabulation Centre, which is separate from the area where the District Four votes were being reconciled, were informed that there was a bomb threat to the building and that they should evacuate.
The Manager said they immediately complied with the exception of his deputy, who remained to back-up the data they had compiled thus far on a flash drive after which he also left.
While they were outside the building at a muster point, Giddings said he received a call from the then Deputy Chief Elections Officer (DCEO), Roxanne Myers, asking if he processed a back-up and to hand over the flash drive.
The Manager noted that while the DCEO’s request was abnormal, he complied and handed over the flash drive, which has been missing since. He went on to recall that while they were still outside, he made a decision to return to the building to power off the server and remove it from facility for its protection.
This, he explained, is in keeping with protocols outlined in GECOM’s IT Division Disaster Recovery Plan, which allows for the removal of servers from premises in certain situations. He told the commission that a bomb threat was an appropriate situation to apply that protocol.
Other persons who testified on previous days include Assistant Police Commissioner and former Divisional Commander for Region Four, Edgar Thomas; Chief Elections Officer Vishnu Persaud and Ronald Stewart, who was in charge of security for GECOM during that fateful period. (G3)