Lowenfield should be ashamed to say he supervised “tainted” elections – regional political analyst

Regional Political Scientist Peter Wickham has blasted Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield over his recent report, in which he is not only making claims of unsubstantiated irregularities, but has also discarded over 115,000 valid votes.
According to Wickham, if this is indeed the case, then it is an indictment on not just Lowenfield’s part, but also the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) – the agency that was responsible for supervising the elections and of which the CEO is a staff.

“So, is Lowenfield saying that he supervised an election in which 50 per cent of the votes cast should not have been cast. What about his scrutineers? What about his teams? What about the electoral ink? Is he suggesting that he himself… and others were responsible for a tainted process in which persons were able to subvert the regulations that he put in place?” Wickham has asked.

“Let’s be clear: elections are supervised by GECOM. If there is a

failure regarding that, it’s GECOM’s failure, and I think they should be holding their heads in shame to suggest that they supervised an election in which half of the people who voted should not have voted. That’s my concern, it’s a self-indictment, the gravity of which we have not previously heard in the Caribbean,” Wickham asserted during the regional programme: “The Week That Was with Zerith McMillan”.

Elections a simple process
The regional political analyst pointed out that the elections process is a simple one, whereby the party with the most votes is declared the winner, and anyone who objects can do so in an elections petition after a declaration of those results, which is the practice throughout the region.
The recently concluded Caribbean Community (Caricom)-supervised National Recount shows the People’s Progressive Party/Civic in a landslide lead with over 15,000 votes more than the caretaker APNU/AFC Coalition. As such, Wickham has made it clear that this prolonged electoral process should come to an end based on these results, so that citizens would be able to move on with their lives.
While the Coalition has since challenged the outcome of the 34-day exercise, the regional political scientist contended that now is not the time to do this.

“We have rules regarding the management of an election. We have rules going in that…this is the agency that will manage the election and the person that gets the most votes wins. We also have a rule that says if someone is able to subvert that process, and if that process does not stand up to scrutiny, there is an Elections Court that will sit. They will hear the evidence and decide the way it goes. That’s the way it has always been, and that’s the way in has been in the last 40/50 years in the Caribbean,” Wickham explained.

Unacceptable
According to the regional political scientist, it is unacceptable the way events have unfolded since the completion of the recount exercise, which has been certified by GECOM as well as overseas observers.
“I do agree that the Guyana elections situation is something that clearly needs attention, but I also agree that this GECOM is not the agency that should deal with it. You need root-and-branch reform. Clearly, it has to come from somewhere else, but in the meantime, follow the rules of the game that says the person that gets the most votes wins,” he posited.
Despite being asked to prepare a report based on the results of the National Recount, Lowenfield submitted a report to the seven-member Elections Commission in which he invalidated more than 115,000 votes based on unsubstantiated claims of irregularities.
But Wickham has argued that even if the votes were indeed tainted, the credibility of the Chief Elections Officer and his Secretariat has been destroyed, and as such, they should never be trusted to manage the country’s electoral process ever again.
“Keith Lowenfield said a lot of things. Keith Lowenfield also said that he had Statements of Poll (SoPs) to support the suggestion that a different result was cast earlier. So, his reputation is being thoroughly destroyed as far as I’m concerned… Why (should) we put confidence in them to hold another election? For them to supervise it in the same way?” he stressed.