Political parties demand elections recount be completed before month-end

…want Mingo, other culpable Secretariat staff removed from process
…call on GECOM to ensure Constitution not violated again

Several political parties that contested the March 2, General and Regional Elections almost two months ago are calling on the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to make every effort to ensure that the Constitution of Guyana is not once again violated with regard the April 30, deadline for the reconvening of Parliament after its dissolution.
As such, the parties have proposed that since there has been no announcement of the hours of work as yet, “…we suggest that there should be two sessions of eight (8) hours each with one (1) break each for lunch and dinner.”

The parties that issued the call over the weekend in a joint statement are A New and United Guyana (ANUG), Change Guyana (CG), Liberty and Justice Party (LJP), The New Movement (TNM) and United Republican Party (URP).
According to the political groups “Having regard to the constitutional deadline, we urge GECOM and the Madame Chair [retired Justice Claudette Singh] to fix a deadline by which the recount should be completed so as to assure the nation that Guyana will not once again drift into unconstitutionality.”
The group used the opportunity to also publicly express its disappointment at the decision of the Chair of GECOM, that only 10 counting stations should be established for recounting the votes of the 10 regions.
The position was communicated to Commissioners on Friday last by Retired Justice Singh, who had also at the time noted that the number of stations would be subject to the availability of the requisite equipment and technology to display the ballots.
Additionally, the GECOM Chairperson indicated that each of the work stations to be used at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC) should tabulate its own results and that for security reasons, all the work stations should be located inside the Conference Centre building.
As such, the group in its joint missive urged that “more stations should be considered by the Madame Chair and, in any circumstances, there should be no less than ten (10).”
According to the political parties, “it cannot be consistent with good administration and the rule of law for more inordinate delay to continue to frustrate the desire of the Guyanese people for an early end to the elections process which started on March 2 and, for all intents and purposes, would have ended on March 4, had the fraudulent activity not taken place on March 4.”
It was noted that the results are now six weeks overdue and “our partners in the international community, including the Commonwealth and the OAS [Organisation of American States], have noted the delay and urged a speedy resolution.”
The group said the public will recall that the court ruled that the first unlawful declaration of the Returning Officer (RO) of Region Four, Clairmont Mingo, was made with the involvement of several members of the GECOM Secretariat and the second declaration is under challenge by an action for contempt of court which is pending.
As such, it was noted that “having regard to the widely-publicised events surrounding these declarations, it is incumbent on GECOM to exclude the RO for Region 4 and the staffers of the Secretariat involved in these declarations to be excluded from involvement in the recount”.
Meanwhile, The Citizenship Initiative, another of the new political parties that contested the March 2, General and Regional Elections on Saturday called for an explicit commitment to a clear plan with a set timeframe for a recount, starting no later than today and being completed before “or not significantly after the constitutional deadline for a Parliament to be in place.”
TCI Leader Rondha-Ann Lam in a separate missive said: “It is unacceptable that after a relatively smooth process covering nine of the ten administrative regions, the Guyana Elections Commission has not operated in ‘significant compliance’ with its constitutional mandate to deliver fair, transparent, credible elections in the tabulation of Region Four nor in any of the remedial processes engaged in the wake of Clairmont Mingo’s incompetence.”
According to Lam, Guyanese “have been treated to postponement of meetings to read judgments that were extremely clear, adjournment of meetings to consider basic documents, the full use of a four-day weekend, and time taken for the creation and adjustment of a recount plan that should have been in place a month ago when the recount was first initiated and a site visit to the same venue that was originally selected for the recount.”
This, she said, “from a Commission that has a statutory responsibility to deliver a final result before the constitutional deadline of April 30. No concern seems to be given as well to the fact that a pandemic is growing in this country, one that not only threatens any recount effort but one that needs a legitimate Government, credibly elected, in place to deal with it.”
She said the GECOM Chair’s most recent ‘intervention’, “one that we had hoped would have provided a definitive way forward, has turned out to be in keeping with the Commission’s behaviour as a whole.
She posited, “…whereas what was needed was a clear-cut plan of action with a definitive administrative strategy, a timeframe for action and assignment of personnel, the public was given a vague document that could be so widely interpreted as to allow a process even longer than the ludicrous 156-day plan originally submitted.”