New GECOM CEO: Guyanese, Jamaican to be interviewed for position next Monday

In a bid to appoint a new Chief Elections Officer (CEO), the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has selected former Deputy Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Vishnu Persaud and former Jamaican election official Leslie Harrow to be interviewed for the post.
This decision was made by the seven-member elections commission during a meeting on Wednesday, when they selected the two candidates from a group of six shortlisted persons.

Following the meeting, Government-nominated Commissioner Sase Gunraj told Guyana Times that the Commission determined that Persaud and Harrow were the most qualified candidates “academically and experience-wise”.
“That is a decision that was made today [Wednesday]. Those interviews would be conducted next Monday by Commissioners,” the GECOM Commissioner related.
Gunraj went on to note that the Elections Commission would be meeting again today – a third consecutive day this week – to finalise the evaluation criteria based upon which the two candidates would be interviewed.
At Tuesday’s statutory meeting, proceedings had to be postponed after there was power outage when the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) suffered a shutdown.
Persaud, who was employed as GECOM’s DCEO from 2014 to 2017, was overlooked for appointment when he sought to return to the position in 2018. In fact, his non-appointment sparked controversy and even an investigation by the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC), which had concluded six months after that he was overlooked and was more qualified than the person who was chosen over him for the position, Roxanne Myers.
On the other hand, news reports in Jamaica revealed that Harrow was up until May employed as head of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) in Jamaica. He previously served in several junior and senior positions at the Electoral Commission of Jamaica over his 18-year tenure there.

Meanwhile, with Persaud and Harrow being the remaining two in the race for the new GECOM CEO, the other four candidates who were in the running for the position but have since been removed are GECOM Information Technology Manager Aneal Giddings; GECOM Assistant Registration Officer and former Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) Commissioner Deodat Persaud; Dr Kurt Clarke from Texas, and Eugene Godfrey Petty from St Kitts.
When GECOM had put out the advertisements to fill these positions in October, over a dozen persons – both locally and overseas – had applied for the post of CEO.
Meanwhile, the electoral body is also looking to fill several other key senior positions within the Elections Secretariat, including DCEO, Assistant Chief Elections Officer, Chief Accountant, Legal Officer, Logistics Officer, and Civic and Voter Education Manager.
These posts are being filled following the removal of former Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield; his then Deputy, Roxanne Myers; and former Returning Officer for Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) Clairmont Mingo, who were on August 12 dismissed from their respective posts at the Elections Commission.
The embattled trio are currently before the courts facing a number of electoral fraud charges for their alleged attempts to sway the results of the March 2020 General and Regional Elections in favour of the then ruling A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) Government.
Lowenfield’s election report claimed that the then governing 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 national recount exercise supervised by GECOM and a high-level team from the Caribbean Community (Caricom) showed that the PPP/C won with 233,336 votes while the Coalition garnered 217,920.
The recount exercise also proved that Mingo heavily inflated the figures in Region Four (Guyana’s most populated voting district) in favour of the then caretaker APNU/AFC regime – which was defeated by a No-Confidence Motion in December 2018.
Against this backdrop, the three Government-nominated GECOM Commissioners – Manoj Narayan, Bibi Shadick and Sase Gunraj – on June 1, 2021 had brought motions calling for the dismissal of Lowenfield, Myers and Mingo from GECOM.
After several delays and legal proceedings, GECOM Chairperson, Justice (retired) Claudette Singh, in a statement announcing the terminations, said after weeks of deliberation on the motions, the services of Lowenfield, Myers and Mingo would be terminated effective August 18, 2021, and they would be compensated in accordance with provisions in their contracts.
Justice Singh disclosed that CEO Lowenfield was dismissed via Clause 9 of his contract, which stipulates that his services can be terminated by giving him three months’ notice, or payment in lieu thereof.
Regarding the DCEO and the RO, their contracts similarly stated that the Commission may, at any time, terminate their employment by giving them three months’ notice or payment in lieu thereof. (G8)