True to form, Lowenfield continues his ignominious journey

Dear Editor,
I patiently waited with bated breath for Wednesday to reach and for Chief Elections Officer Lowenfield to present his ‘recount plan’. True to form, he has continued his ignominious journey to facilitate the rigging of the 2020 General and Regional Elections.
Everyone thought it was All Fools’ Day when Lowenfield announced that the recounting process will take 156 days, or approximately 5 months to be completed!
This is absurdity to the extreme when one takes into consideration that this same CEO had said in February this year, it was reported, that GECOM only needs 148 days to prepare for elections.
Therefore, it goes against the very grain of rationality that a ‘recount’ should take more time than preparation for the said Election.
Already 37 days have gone by, so this means that the counting of the votes of the 2020 Elections would be taking 193 days, or over 6 months.
In July last year, just before the CCJ’s decision, Lowenfield went into a delaying mode to support the APNU/AFC’s quest to defer the elections as long as possible. He no longer waited on the CCJ’s rulings, but embarked on the GECOM-backed delay by foisting the house-to-house registration on the Guyanese electorate. This precipitated the call for another court intervention, and more delay.
Lowenfield was in charge, and he made full use of his usurpation of the power of the Commission. It must be recalled that the Private Sector Commission had upbraided Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield for commencing and sanctioning ‘an unsanctioned, unverified’ house-to-house registration. However, Lowenfield was never sanctioned, and neither was he intimidated in any way. He was fulfilling the PNC’s directives! In fact, he made it plain by his action that he was in charge even after the appointment of the new Chairperson, Justice Claudette Singh.
Since the HtH, he fiddled with the claims and objections, the voters lists and the polling places, but yet the PPP/C withstood this onslaught by tirelessly counterattacking every one of Lowenfield’s tricks.
Dr Jagdeo ensured that he effectively broke the rigging machinery which the PNC had brought into motion since the passing of the No Confidence Motion.
However, the Burnhamite faction of the PNC will never give up, and as I had mentioned in one of my letters, the ball is being played from the Coalition to the court and to GECOM and back; it’s a never-ending vicious circle. In this last circle, we have seen that Granger wanted a recount, GECOM wanted a recount, but a Coalition candidate filed an injunction to block the recount. It moved from the High Court to the Full Court, and then to the Court of Appeal, which ruled that there must be a recount and the conduct of that recount is in the hands of GECOM.
Subsequently, a meeting held by GECOM on the way forward tasked the CEO to come up with a ‘recount plan’. But this is where Lowenfield is given an opportunity to play his dirty game!
I wrote in one of my letters, the Trail of Rigging, that, “It is now clear for the world to see that the rigging of elections in Guyana could never be possible without the much needed assistance from GECOM, especially from the CEO and the Returning Officer of Region 4, and the ‘missing in action’ GECOM Chairperson”.
There is conclusive evidence that GECOM worked hand in glove with the PNC to rig the 1968, 1973, 1980 and 1985 Elections, and the 1978 Referendum; and it was the CEO who was used.
We must not allow this to happen at any and all cost! Any attempt to rig this election and to install the Coalition as the Government must be rejected. The recount must be done in a speedy manner. I do feel that this lengthy ‘recount plan’ is to get rid of the international and local observers, since it is impossible for them to remain that long in the country. The international community must continue to agitate for, and protect, our democracy!

Yours sincerely,
Haseef Yusuf