Once again a high-level Caricom team is being sent by Prime Minister Mia Mottley to provide oversight for a recount that was supposed to begin for more than 50 days now. The team showed up before, on March 14, and left on March 17, after it became clear that “forces within GECOM are determined to prevent the recount”, as Prime Minister Mottley of Barbados concluded.
There have been many twists and turns, including the need to fumigate the Conference Centre where the recount was supposed to happen, the need to sanitise all GECOM’s buildings, the intervention of the court, time to prepare a plan, the need for Moses Nagamootoo to determine if the COVID-19 Task Force will approve the recount, the need for David Granger to overrule Nagamootoo, Lowenfield demanding 156 days for the recount, and many other silly things.
Once again, GECOM promises that the recount will happen. They insisted, however, they must wait for Caricom to signal when they can come. Caricom has gone one better – they will arrive tomorrow (Thursday).
Even as Caricom has told GECOM, all of Guyana and the world that they will arrive for the recount on Thursday, GECOM has not yet (as of Tuesday afternoon) informed anyone when the recount will start. Is it going to be déjà vu? The last time, the high-level Caricom team sat around, waiting patiently, watching in amazement as big men and women grotesquely twisted themselves to prevent the recount. Caricom is coming again and GECOM has not yet, with just 24 hours before the team arrives, announced the start of the recount. Other observer teams are supposed to be present, including local observers, and international observers, such as the Carter Center, the Commonwealth, the OAS and a Caricom observer team.
These teams have said they are willing to come and see the process completed. But they clearly were not prepared to wait around and they left. Now they have to come back. GECOM has not said when they will start. Clearly, however, with the Caricom team here, there is an urgency to start. No one trusts GECOM and everyone knows that they are like a puppet on a string, waiting on their APNU/AFC masters for the next twist in this sordid game.
In the meanwhile, GECOM has wrangled itself into establishing ground rules that reduce to almost zero, any transparency and accountability for the recount. They have rejected any live streaming and/or any recording of the recounting process, rejected the presence of experts who could record the results and provide independent tabulation. They have crafted a weird, confusing recount procedure, with several regions being counted simultaneously. These are all provisions to corrupt the process and the results. All of this while demanding an open-ended process, with no end in sight. Who, therefore, can trust that GECOM’s intentions are pure?
GECOM has also refused to provide copies of Region Four’s Statements of Poll. These are public properties. They were posted up at Polling Stations and it is activists of APNU/AFC that removed many of those SoPs that were posted on buildings, in some cases even reposting fake SoPs. There are two sets of Region Four SoPs at GECOM. One set that was handed over to the Returning Officer of Region Four, the disgraced Clairmont Mingo, and a second set in the possession of Keith Lowenfield. Neither of these sets of SoPs has been made available to the PPP Commissioners who have demanded they see these SoPs. The SoPs are not the private properties of Keith Lowenfield or Mingo.
They belong to the people of Guyana and GECOM is entrusted with the responsibility to preserve and keep them safe. Every Commissioner has the right to see them and examine them. Were they corrupted? Did someone try to alter the results in each of the SoPs? Is this why these have become so secret? Is it that there is something very sinister and ominous to hide?
Given the circumstances, GECOM is not trusted, not just by the PPP leadership, but by the leadership of, at least, nine other political parties. Civil society does not trust GECOM. Local and international observers do not trust GECOM. Thus, Justice Claudette Singh has a responsibility to go the extra mile to provide a level of trust. Instead, she supported a cabal at GECOM to move backwards and to reduce transparency and, therefore, heighten suspicion.
Even as GECOM itself is seen largely as an instrument for rigging the results, their masters, APNU/AFC, is actively fomenting even greater distrust. One of its hatchet men, Vincent Alexander, has openly claimed that the recount is not necessarily going to be useful, as the original fake declaration by Mingo stands and that GECOM is bound by that declaration.
The Chair herself now insists that all the declarations remain in place. The court threw out the Region Four declaration. The agreement to recount all the regions means that after the recount, those results stand. Why the double-speak? Then there are the sycophants who insist the ballot boxes must be destroyed and that there must be an interim Government, that the status-quo continue until 2025.
Who can trust these people?
