“They had no case” – AG welcomes dismissal of election petition appeal

By Feona Morrison

Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall, SC, has praised the Court of Appeal’s decision on Monday to dismiss the petition filed on behalf of the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) coalition, which challenged the final results of the March 2, 2020 elections declared by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) on August 2, 2020.

“Whether they (APNU/AFC) will appeal to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) is a matter completely for them. They had no case in the first place. They have lost the March 2, 2020 Regional and General Elections by thousands of votes. Secondly, recognising that, they started to hatch theories and allegations of irregularities… that 15,000 dead people voted, and that documents were removed from 40 ballot boxes. And they triggered that entire fiasco that the world witnessed,” said Nandlall in a live broadcast shortly after the ruling.
The petition in question, Election Petition #88, filed by Claudette Thorne and Heston Bostwick, was dismissed by Chief Justice (ag) Roxane George, SC, on April 26, 2021, on the grounds that it was without merit. The petitioners contended that the Guyana Elections Commission’s (GECOM’s) conduct of the elections on March 2, 2020, had broken electoral rules and the Guyana Constitution to such an extent that the election results needed to be declared null and void.
Their main argument was that Section 22 of the Election Laws (Amendment) Act 2000 was violated by GECOM in issuing Recount Order No 60, which gave rise to the vote recount.
The petitioners later challenged the acting Chief Justice’s decision.

Wrong and strong
Nandlall added, “These petitions [Petition #88 and #99] in my view should never have been filed in the first place, because they did not have a case. It’s an expression of trying to play wrong and strong when you have lost fairly and secondly, trying to derail a process that you have agreed to.”
In this regard, he reminded that the Recount Order that was challenged by the main parliamentary Opposition is the very one its Commissioners at GECOM helped to craft.
“They agreed to the recount through their representatives at GECOM and through their President [David Granger]. And when the recount did not produce the results to their liking, they wanted to break up the whole process. That is undemocratic conduct. That is conduct that strikes at the heart of democracy and fair play,” said the Senior Counsel.
He added that the Opposition was “parroting” a story about how they were cheated in the elections that is “so outrageous and ridiculous.”… and they do it with great enthusiasm and emotion and without any regret or guilt.
He noted that despite the Opposition’s first election petition (Petition #99) being dismissed by the CCJ, they are still going ahead with all of this. He said he did not believe the ruling on Monday would “change their narrative”, because “they will still go out there shamelessly and assert victory at the elections and refer to the PPP Government as installed.”
He, therefore, implored Opposition supporters not to be “duped” by this narrative and to “allow their rational mind and common-sense capabilities to see through this facade”.
Additionally, Nandlall said that Election Petition #99 “was even a greater exemplification” of the Opposition’s incompetence. “Election Petition #99 did not even get off its feet. Why? Because they couldn’t even get the service of the petition correct…”
He noted that the courts’ ruling on “Petition #99 has reinforced the traditional position that procedural matters in election petitions are mandatory and that they must be scrupulously obeyed and compiled with and a failure will result in the dismissal of the petition.”
As it relates to the ruling on Election Petition #88, he said the courts have recognised and acknowledged GECOM’s powers to take such steps that it considers necessary, expedient, fair, and transparent to resolve disputes and to resolve difficulties and controversies that may arise.
And now that the courts have pronounced on the validity of the 2020 national elections, the Attorney General said he hoped that the Opposition’s “narrative” would stop.

Electoral fraud cases
Meanwhile, the electoral fraud case involving those accused of attempting to rig the 2020 elections in favour of the then caretaker APNU/AFC government resumes next month.
Charged are: former District Four (Demerara-Mahaica) Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo; former People’s National Congress/Reform (PNCR) Chairperson Volda Lawrence; PNCR activist Carol Smith-Joseph; former Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield; former Deputy Chief Elections Officer Roxanne Myers; and GECOM employees Sheffern February, Enrique Livan, Denise Babb-Cummings, and Michelle Miller.
They are accused of several offences, including misconduct while holding public office, presenting falsified documentation, and planning to manipulate Guyana’s voters by presenting an inaccurate vote total. These accused persons are all out on cash bail pending the outcome of their trials.
The election report of former CEO Lowenfield claimed that the 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 recount exercise supervised by GECOM and a high-level team from Caricom pellucidly showed that the PPP/C won with 233,336 votes, while the coalition garnered 217,920.
The recount exercise also highlighted that Mingo had heavily inflated the figures in Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) – Guyana’s largest voting District – in favour of the then-caretaker APNU/AFC regime. In August 2021, GECOM voted to terminate the employment of Lowenfield, Myers, and Mingo.