Dear Editor,
Guyana’s elections have gripped the nation for 105 days, which is almost 30% of the year. Voting in the March 2, 2020 polls has been smooth, so much so, that all sides and the observers have declared the proceeding on E-Day as free and fair and free from fair and thus credible. The entire system broke down when Mr. Claremont Mingo attempted to fraudulently altered the results for District No. 4, by inflating the number of valid votes won by the APNU-AFC by 19,116 and pinched 3,689 valid votes from the PPPC.
As a means of exposing the Mingo fraud and getting to the truth, all sides agreed to a recount process, which has now been completed. This process has produced some factual results of the aggregated tally of the valid votes found in the 2,339 ballot boxes. To the credit of the Chief Elections Officer, he provided those summary results of the tally from the ballot boxes from all of ten (10) Region by way of the ten (10) Certificates of District Tabulation. Those ten (10) Certificates which is authenticated by the GECOM Tabulation Supervisor and the GECOM District Coordinator when they both certified that “the totals were correctly complied, ascertained and verified using the Statements of Recount received at the Tabulation Centre and are extracted from the tabulation matrix”.
When the totals on those ten (10) Tabulation Certificates are aggregated, the summary totals illustrated that the winners of the 2020 General Elections is the PPPC with 233,336 votes while the second-highest totals belonged to the APNU-AFC which got some 15,416 votes less. The extract of the aggregated recount totals of valid votes is illustrated in the extracts from Mr. Lowenfield Report submitted on June 13, 2020:
These are the facts and there is no room for innuendos, insinuations, and allegations. But this is exactly the overtone that the Chief Elections Officer sought to insert by way of his attempt to add his personal opinions to that report. Such a situation exposed his unprofessionalism, naked opportunism, and blind allegiance to the PNC, the mother ship in this entire attempt to rig these elections. His dishonorable performance begs the question – was he bribed to alter the facts?
I was a party to the entire recount and tabulation process and one of the few who attended every single day from the inception to the expiry of that process. What I witnessed was an overwhelming level of professionalism and commitment on the part of the stakeholders (save and except a few exceptions). But in the grand scheme of things, the recount process was credible and achieve its objective of recounting every single ballot cast.
So it is most disturbing that Mr. Lowenfield has the audacity to insert his personal prejudices into the CEO’s Report that does not accurately reflect the fact of the matters that took place during those grueling 35 days. Nowhere in this process, were any of the APNU instigated allegations proven and for Mr. Lowenfield to jump on that train of unproven and unsubstantiated allegations exposes that he is a stranger to his mandate and is being guided by another force that does not subscribe to the principle of “one person: one vote and that every vote must be counted”. Even the Chairman of GECOM got it when she said “he who asserts must prove” because that is the basis upon which the results for an elections are declared – facts and only facts.
Every item included in the CEO’s Report to the Commission under the heading – Summary of Observation Report are allegations and if one visits the Oxford Dictionary they will find that an allegation is a “claim that is made without proof”. You do not declare an elections on assertions or avowals or affirmations. You declare an elections on hard empirical evidence and facts. And that is what the recount process produced, Statement of Recounts (SoRs) that illustrated that the PPPC secured 233,336 valid votes and no other list of candidate secured more. And even if you academically combined all the other tally of the other parties, it still cannot surpass the total valid votes earned by the PPPC, which confirms that the PPPC has won the majority and plurality in these 2020 General Elections and has a legal and moral right to be declared the winner.
Thus, this nation and the international community have one expectation from the GECOM Commission and in particular the GECOM Chairperson – declare the PPPC as the winners of the 2020 General Elections and Dr. Irfaan Ali as the next President of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana.
Anything else would be a sham. The eyes of all of us are now on Claudette Singh.
Regards,
Sasenarine Singh
