The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has formally re-invited the Caribbean Community (Caricom) to oversee the recount of the election results in all ten regions.
Caricom headquarters
This was confirmed by GECOM Commissioner Sase Gunraj, who noted that the invitation was sent on Tuesday morning. However, while Caricom has been reengaged, Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield is yet to present his revised plan for the recount.
Lowenfield was ordered by GECOM to revise his previous 156-day proposal and present it at Tuesday’s statutory meeting. Despite this, however, this order was not carried out by the time GECOM met on Tuesday.
Instead, GECOM has to meet again today where it is hoped the plan will be presented. In an interview with this publication, Gunraj questioned whether it is a case of a Secretariat unwilling to follow instructions or incompetence.
He noted that both Lowenfield and his deputy, Roxanne Myers, sit in during Commission meetings. Despite this and the minutes of the meeting being provided, Lowenfield’s excuse for not presenting the proposal was that he needed clarity on some points.
“This recent failure by the Secretariat to carry out the clear instructions of the Commission begs the question as to whether the CEO and DCEO, who sit in Commission meetings, are incompetent or unwilling to carry out the decisions of the Commission,” he posited.
Gunraj also noted that Caricom has not yet responded and observers have so far not been engaged on returning to work when the recount starts. However, he was optimistic that a high-level Caricom team will return.
Since the elections were held over a month ago, a winner is yet to be announced. The majority of observers who scrutinised the tabulation process have pronounced it to have not been credible and there has been international pressure for Guyana to ensure the process is transparent and credible.
GECOM itself had come in for much of the criticism, with repeated attempts being made by Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo to subvert the process going unchecked by the GECOM Chairwoman, Retired Justice Claudette Singh.
Despite Singh promising that she would facilitate a recount, attempts to have the recount done at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC) never took off because of delays, more controversy and ultimately, a member of the coalition party securing an injunction from High Court Judge Franklyn Holder against the exercise.
It is this injunction that led to the first Caricom high-level team withdrawing from the jurisdiction. Caribbean Community (Caricom) Chair Mia Mottley, who played an integral part in forging the agreement to have Caricom send a team, subsequently spoke about “forces” who do not want a recount to happen.
The injunction was later thrown out by the Full Court and the Appeal Court upheld this decision, leaving the way clear for GECOM to conduct its recount and finally determine a winner of the elections.
But when given a chance to draft a proposed plan for the recount, Lowenfield drafted and presented one that said the recount would last a staggering 156 days.
After a firestorm of criticism, Lowenfield was ordered to return to the drawing board and revise his proposal. The plan was expected to be presented and discussed at Tuesday’s statutory meeting.
