No “ands, ifs and buts”, the time is NOW to fire all those who were involved in the attempted rigging of the March 2020 elections.
The GECOM management team was engaged in skullduggery to thief the March 2020 General Elections. That rigging attempt lasted a full five months. All political parties in Guyana, excepting APNU/AFC, are on record condemning the rigging machinery in GECOM. All these political parties agree that the Chief Elections Officer, Keith Lowenfield, and the Deputy Chief Elections Officer, Roxanne Myers, are the leaders of the rigging machinery in GECOM. All these political parties agree there are other senior members within the GECOM management team, including Mingo, who are integral members of the rigging machinery. The world watched stunned at the clumsy attempt to thief the March 2020 General and Regional Elections, and watched in absolute horror as the electoral thieving siege lasted for more than five long months. Every observer group, without a single exception, agreed there is a rigging machinery within GECOM. For GECOM to credibly conduct another election in Guyana, that rigging machinery must be treated as a cancer and be excised.
The persons who have been implicated in that rigging attempt cannot be allowed a free pass, or they will be emboldened. GECOM must act now – GECOM must ensure that those staff members who flagrantly attempted to interfere with the integrity of the March 2021 elections are dismissed with immediate effect. The courts will take its own time and will use its own system to decide the status of the crime committed. GECOM does not have the luxury of waiting on the court system. It has to act now, as in now, to begin its preparation for both local government elections this year and the General Elections in 2025.
As it is, GECOM is in a slumber, it cannot move forward unless the rigging machinery is expelled now.
Just the Chair and six commissioners are costing this country almost $50M per year. The rigging machinery is costing Guyanese taxpayers even more than that. The Chair and the Commissioners must act today, not a day more must be permitted to go by without GECOM taking real action. This column is aware there are commissioners linked to APNU/AFC who have defended those who assaulted the integrity of Guyana’s elections in 2020. But the other commissioners must not delay action anymore. The time has come for GECOM to hold a meeting now with one agenda item – what to do with those who are now facing criminal charges for electoral fraud. GECOM’s Chair cannot continue to procrastinate. She will have to decide if she will give a pass to those staff members who publicly assaulted the integrity of GECOM itself and the integrity of the elections. Her own integrity is on the line.
All the observer groups have published their reports, or have pronounced on the conduct of the March 2020 elections. All of them have agreed that the present GECOM staff cannot be trusted to conduct another election in Guyana.
Local government elections are due in 2021. The PPP Government has committed to holding these elections in 2021. The Minister of Local Government made this clear during his address on BUDGET 2021. While 2025 appears a far distance off, General and Regional Elections will be due, and before anyone of us realises, 2025 will be here. Guyana just cannot afford another debacle as the one in March 2020, when a rigging machinery within GECOM, in collaboration with APNU/AFC, tried to thief a whole election in front of the shocked eyes of the world. Right at this moment, senior GECOM staff and members of APNU/AFC are in front of the courts charged with elections fraud.
This time last year (March 2020), the whole world was paying attention to the brazen attempt at electoral heist. It was not just brazen, not just absolutely disgraceful, it was a blatantly clumsy attempt to thief the elections. At first, the rigging machinery’s efforts focused on changing the numbers in the formal Statements of Poll. They refused to show the SOPs, but used a fake spreadsheet. The political parties had their own copies of the SOPs. The observers had their own copies of the SOPs, and they all confirmed that the numbers being read from the spreadsheet for polling stations in Region 4 were fake numbers, not consistent with the numbers in the SOPs that were in possession of the political parties and the observers. Some newspapers also had photographed copies of SOPs that they took from polling places and these also proved different from the spreadsheet numbers.
APNU/AFC insisted the spreadsheet numbers were correct, but, like GECOM, they too refused to show their SOPs. With their fake numbers rejected, the GECOM staff resorted to siding with APNU/AFC that there were tens of thousands of ghosts and phantoms who voted in the elections. Thankfully, the court has now forced GECOM to deposit their SOPs for preservation by the court.
Guyana cannot afford another election like the March 2020 election. The longer GECOM takes to address the elephant in the room, the greater the chance that we will repeat the March 2020 debacle. We must not procrastinate any longer – fire the rigging machinery immediately.
