– had indicated month-end for recount completion
…as Caricom queries live streaming activity to avoid travelling to Guyana
Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Chairperson, Retired Justice Claudette Singh is expected to give a formal pronouncement today with regard to the modalities to be adopted for the recount of the March 2 General and Regional Elections.
This was confirmed on Thursday by Commissioners Vincent Alexander and Sase Gunraj, both of whom briefed media operatives following the conclusion of Thursday’s meeting at noon.
The men indicated that Commissioners from both sides of the political divide were able to present a summation of the proposals for the recount.
These include a proposal by People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Commissioner Gunraj for the recount to be done using 20 workstations in as little as 10 days. Additionally,
there are proposals by Alexander for the use of eight workstations in addition to the original proposal by the Secretariat for the activity to be completed in 156 days.
In fact, on Wednesday, following the site inspection of the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, Justice Singh
expressed the view that the recount could be completed before the
Keith Lowenfield
deadline, which incidentally is April 30, since Parliament was dissolved on December 30, 2019.
“Of course, it would! Once it starts, it would be finished,” the Chairperson, a retired
Judge, said. According to her, she does not envision a constitutional crisis if the recount exceeds the four-month deadline.
Importantly, she also sought to dispel any worry that the previous declarations would be used. Justice Singh noted that once a decision is taken to do a recount, the previous declarations are no longer relevant.
“When we would have
gone into the recount stage, we will no longer come back to those declarations,” she explained.
In briefing media operatives, Commissioner Gunraj related that the Chairperson “has heard all of the submissions made by both sides of the table”.
“I believe that I have justified all of my proposals; I’d want to suggest that the other proposal have been articulated to her and she, I believe, is capable and I am confident in her ability to make the right decision,” Gunraj said.
Asked whether the Chairperson would be choosing from one of the proposals or try to come up with a consensus based on those proposals, Gunraj told media operatives “the Chairman has the final say in this and we expect her to do so”.
Elaborating on the modalities for consideration that have been presented to Justice Singh, the PPP Commissioner noted that in addition to the publicly disclosed submissions from the stakeholders, there has been a request from Caricom for the live streaming of the activities, so that they could be observed by Caricom agents who would not be able to travel to Guyana.
According to Gunraj, “she is engaging with Caricom in relation to their involvement and as a consequence, Caricom must be concerned: if we are sending people, how long we are sending them for, what can they do, what are the restrictions given the COVID pandemic…”
The PPP Commissioner, when asked whether a high-level team from Caricom, would, in fact, be coming to Guyana, informed that the Commission was yet to receive any confirmation on that. He said too that among the other considerations for the GECOM Chair was the communication with the National Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Task Force with regard to the conducting of the recount exercise.
Asked whether the activity would be live streamed for the Guyanese public, he noted that this was a decision still to be taken by the Chair.
Alexander, a Government-aligned Commissioner, expanded, saying that “what Caricom said is that rather than having all of their personnel come here, that the personnel could be overseas and it could be streamed to them”.
He suggested that among the possibilities was to have some persons here while the activity was streamed overseas for others in the observing process and not a public live stream per se.
He noted the Commission rehashed the pros and cons of using eight versus 20 tabulating stations.
Notably, Alexander disclosed too that Justice Singh during the meeting had related that Caricom representatives in their communication with GECOM had expressed concerns over the use of 20 workstations in light of the COVID-19 measures.
He said that it was explained that the concerns over the stations saw their genesis in the fact that 20 counting stations would require the presence of a minimum of 300 persons, “this is a concern that I had raised”.
Asked about the decision to be made by Justice Singh, Alexander posited that it was not a case of choosing one proposal over another and that the Chairperson could come up with a document that supported compromise or consensus.
