Poll documents were carelessly handled at Mingo’s office – video shows

Elections officials attached to the Office of the Returning Officer for Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), Clairmont Mingo, have been captured on video carelessly handling polling documents.

The documents were last seen in the possession of the staff of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) in March at Mingo’s Office at the Ashmins building, located at High and Hadfield Streets, Georgetown.
The polling documents, which were sealed in envelopes, were being untidily scattered across the floor and disorderly stuffed into garbage bags.
The APNU/AFC coalition has been claiming “electoral fraud” because the documents for several polling places on the East Coast of Demerara (ECD), Region Four, cannot be found.

The areas from where the ancillary documents are missing include several of the People’s Progressive Party’s (PPP) strongholds. Among the missing documents are poll books, counterfoils, the marked (ticked off) Official List of Electors.
Those documents were supposed to have been stored in the ballot boxes, however, they were placed into bags instead.
GECOM said on Saturday last that it checked the poll bags in hope of recovering those missing documents but they were not found.
As such, it summoned the Deputy Returning Officers (DROs), who worked between Ogle to Lusignan to explain what transpired on Elections Day but those officers did not turn up to the meeting.
However, GECOM has not published to names of the DROs who deliberately missed the meeting.
GEOCM has since claimed that efforts would be made to contact the Presiding Officers who were responsible for the respective Polling Stations.
However, several of the Presiding Officers have since indicated they were instructed by the Returning Officer’s (Clairmont Mingo) Clerk to hand over these documents to the DROs at the last minute despite them insisting that this was outside of their training.
Presiding Officer of Montrose Primary School, Wendy Ann posted on social media that “we were instructed by our DRO to not put the documents in the box”.
DRO Paul Jaisingh, in a letter to GECOM, said the instruction was passed down from the Returning Officer’s Clerk.
“Please be informed that instructions were given by Miss Carlyn Duncan (Clerk to the Returning Officer Mr Clairmont Mingo-District #4) to include only unused, valid and rejected ballots in the ballot boxes. This was communicated to the respective Presiding Officers who complied. As a result, the other documents were placed in the bag provided. This instruction was given on Election Day a few hours before the close of the poll. Other Deputy Returning Officers affected by this decision can confirm the same,” he stated in the letter.