Officials who committed electoral fraud will be held accountable – new GECOM Commissioner

…cites policies to prevent recurrence

Attorney-at-Law Manoj Narayan was on Thursday sworn in by President Dr Irfaan Ali to serve as a Commissioner on the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM). He expressed strong conviction that officials who assisted to derail the outcome of the March 2 General and Regional Elections would be held to account.

Narine replaces Robeson Benn, who has taken up the portfolio of Home Affairs Minister in the new administration. Narayan joins Commissioners Sase Gunraj and Bibi Shadick as representatives of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) at the GECOM Secretariat.
After a simple ceremony at State House, the new Commissioner affirmed his commitment to fulfilling his purpose on the Commission. According to Narayan, the country’s electoral democracy was under siege for at least five months, and he believes that work must commence to repair the damage.
“From 2nd March to 2nd August, we have witnessed a most heinous assault on our electoral democracy, and therefore my work begins immediately, because we have to do a lot of things at GECOM. The very survival of our electoral democracy requires that we solve those,” he declared.
In moving forward, he said those who aided in the abetment of electoral fraud must be held accountable, since it is not a ‘trivial’ matter.
“I think the first one is that those who have undermined that electoral process must be held responsible. They all took oaths of office under the Representation of the People’s Act and they blatantly and flagrantly breached that oath which they took…Their actions are not trivial or trifling, (such) that we can sweep under the carpet,” the new Commissioner detailed.
Narayan shared that policies need to be created to ensure there is no recurrence of such actions, as they seek to rebuild the image of GECOM on the local and international stage. In the post-electoral drama, GECOM was heavily criticised as the population was forced to wait five months for a declaration. However, he insisted that the Commission has far-reaching powers to institute disciplinary actions.
“We will need to implement policies at the level of the Commission to insulate the commission from these occurrences in the future. We also need to rebuild the public confidence in GECOM, not only locally, but internationally, because that has suffered a great dent after what transpired. The Commission has wide powers under Article 161A of the Constitution. The Commission is empowered to institute disciplinary proceedings against officers of the Elections Commission.”
Only last Tuesday, controversial former Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo was arrested and interrogated in relation to allegations levied against him, citing that he committed electoral fraud. In addition, his Deputy, Carolyn Duncan, was also taken into custody.
He was arrested at his Mahaicony, East Coast Demerara (ECD) home and escorted to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), where he was grilled. Mingo is being investigated for alleged criminal misconduct after allegations were raised that he attempted to alter the March 2 elections’ results in favour of the former Administration – the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change coalition.
It was Mingo’s attempts to alter the results of the elections that led to the National Recount exercise which ultimately proved the major irregularities in figures being called by the Returning Officer when compared to the actual numbers of votes cast.
In June, the Region Four results gave the People’s Progressive Party/Civic a total victory margin of more than 15,400 votes over their nearest rivals, the APNU/AFC.
The difference was noted by the Head of the Electoral Observation Mission of the Organisation of American States (OAS) in Guyana, Bruce Golding, who had stated that he has never seen such a “transparent effort to alter the results of an election”. Moreover, it showed that the numbers produced by Mingo were heavily inflated to have a rigged win for the coalition.