Electoral fraud cases against former GECOM officials adjourned until October

The election fraud cases filed against several high-ranking former Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) officials have been adjourned until October 6.
Those charged are former Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield, former Deputy Chief Elections Officer Roxane Myers, and former Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo.

The case for the prosecution is being led by Darshan Ramdhani, QC, while Senior Counsel John Jeremie and Attorneys-at-Law Nigel Hughes, Ronald Daniels, Konyo Sandiford, Eusi Anderson, and Latoya Roberts are appearing on behalf of the three accused persons.

Lowenfield is facing three counts of forgery and three counts of misconduct in public office, while Mingo and Myers are facing separate charges for misconduct in public office.
Lowenfield’s election report claimed that the APNU/AFC coalition garnered 171,825 votes while the PPP/C gained 166,343 votes.
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) pellucidly showed that the PPP/C won with 233,336 votes while the coalition garnered 217,920.

The recount exercise also proved that Mingo had heavily inflated the figures in Region Four—Guyana’s largest voting District, in favour of the then caretaker APNU/AFC regime.
In August 2021, GECOM voted to terminate Lowenfield, Myers, and Mingo.
The firing of these officials was met with much satisfaction by the Government which hailed it as a step in the right direction to restoring public confidence in GECOM.