Election fraud case: Video recording presented in court shows Lowenfield stayed silent during 2020 Police interrogation

…says “I have nothing to say” when questioned about fraudulent numbers

A video shown Wednesday in court revealed that former Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield remained silent on September 26, 2020, when police questioned him about how he calculated figures in his election reports to GECOM for the March 2, 2020, General and Regional Elections (GRE).

As the testimonies continue in the election fraud case at the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court, the video evidence showed that Lowenfield’s attorney, Nigel Hughes, was present during his interrogation.
The recording was based specifically on the election reports Lowenfield submitted to the Chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) on June 23, 2020, and in July 2020.
“How did you arrive at the figures?” Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Komal Pitamber continuously enquired as he questioned Lowenfield about the reports. “I choose not to answer the question,” Lowenfield is seen repeatedly responding. At one point, he quipped, “Stay blank and say nothing.”
Nevertheless, the video evidence was presented despite objections by his attorney, Nigel Hughes.

Lowenfield’s reports delivered results giving victory to the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC).
The recordings were presented to the court, presided over by Magistrate Faith McGusty, and formed part of the testimony of Sergeant Alwyn Jones, an officer attached to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) who was the videographer for the interview with Lowenfield.
Jones was also the videographer for interviews with Lowenfield’s co-defendants, Enrique Livan and APNU+AFC Chief Scrutineer, Carol Joseph. However, the admissibility of the interview with Livan was challenged on the allegation that Livan’s lawyer was asked to leave during the interrogation.
Lowenfield, Livan, and Smith-Joseph are among nine individuals currently facing 19 charges of conspiracy to commit electoral fraud for the events that occurred following the March 2, 2020, GRE.
Other persons charged include former Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo, Deputy CEO Roxanne Myers, former APNU+AFC Minister Volda Lawrence, and former GECOM employees Sheffern February, Michelle Miller, and Denise Babb-Cummings.
During his interview, Lowenfield was also questioned about Statements of Poll (SOP) received from Mingo, pursuant to Mingo’s tabulation of the Region Four votes in 2020. At the end of his testimony, three discs containing interviews recorded between August and September 2020 were admitted by the court.
Chaos erupted over the 2020 elections after Mingo attempted to make a declaration of the Region Four results using numbers that would have given the APNU+AFC a win in the elections. However, the numbers were contested, given that they were not verified and did not correlate with numbers seen on existing SoPs.
The declaration of the election results was delayed pending a five-month-long recount process that proved Mingo’s original numbers to be inaccurate. Mingo originally awarded the APNU+AFC 130,289 votes and 74,877 votes to the PPP/C.
When the recount process concluded on June 7, 2020, Lowenfield released a new set of results on June 23, 2020, in which he had invalidated over 115,000 votes. The new results had the APNU+AFC as the winning party with 171,825 votes and 33 seats, and the PPP/C in second place with 166,343 votes and 31 seats.
How he arrived at those figures is still unknown, since the certified results from the recount exercise supervised by GECOM and a high-level team from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) plainly showed that the PPP/C won with 233,336 votes, while the coalition garnered 217,920.
The recount exercise also highlighted that Mingo had heavily inflated the figures in Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) – Guyana’s largest voting district – in favour of the then-caretaker APNU/AFC regime.
In August 2021, GECOM voted to terminate the employment of Lowenfield, Myers, and Mingo.