…as high-level team arrives to supervise exercise
–CARICOM Chair urges credible, transparent process
AHEAD of the arrival of the high-level Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on Friday, CARICOM Chairman and Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley said the National Recount of the March 2020 Elections must be credible and transparent; that nothing else will suffice.
“The Community calls on all concerned to ensure a credible and transparent recount process in order to provide legitimacy to any government which would be sworn in as a result,” Prime Minister Mottley said in a statement, hours before the delegation landed at the Eugene F. Correia International Airport at Ogle in a chartered Trans Guyana Airways plane.
Now that the high-level mission is in Guyana, the CARICOM Chair said the process must be completed without further delay. With the team’s arrival, it is expected that the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) will move to gazette an order for the recount to be initiated.
The three-member delegation, comprising Senior Lecturer at the University of the West Indies Cynthia Barrow-Giles; Commissioner of the Antigua and Barbuda Electoral Commission John Jarvis; and Supervisor of St Vincent Electoral Commission Sylvester King, will scrutinise the electoral process.
Barrow-Giles was a member of the high-level team which came to Guyana in March to participate in a scheduled recount, which had to be aborted after GECOM encountered a number of legal challenges. Prime Minister Mottley noted that the other members of the initial team were unavailable for the present mission. However, both Jarvis and King formed part of CARICOM’s Electoral Observer Mission that observed the March 2 Elections.
The three-member delegation arrived at the Eugene F. Correia International Airport at around 15:00hrs, and was welcomed by the CARICOM Secretariat’s Assistant Secretary-General for Foreign and Community Relations, Ambassador Colin Granderson. Health officials and other CARICOM representatives were also present at the time of the delegation’s arrival. CARICOM, in announcing the team’s arrival, expressed thanks to the Government of Canada for the generous support it has provided the initiative.
ONE MONTH ON
This high-level delegation arrives in Guyana more than one month after the initial group was left with no other choice but to withdraw from the process after their involvement as “supervisors” was deemed unconstitutional.
The high-level team had arrived in Guyana on March 15 to supervise a planned national recount, which had stemmed from an agreement between President David Granger and Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo, but by March 17, they withdrew after a private citizen, Ulita Moore, secured four injunctions from the High Court to block the recount, on the grounds that it was unconstitutional.
Added to that, though President Granger and the Opposition Leader had signed an Aide Memoire agreeing to the recount, CARICOM had requested a legal cover, in the form of a gazzetted order. However, Guyana’s Chief Parliamentary Counsel, Charles Fung-a-Fat advised against it. According to him, to do so would be to supersede electoral laws, and infringe on the rights of electors.
However, on April 3, GECOM took a decision to proceed with the National Recount after the Full Court discharged the injunctions, and dismissed the application filed by Moore on the basis that the challenge ought to have been filed by way of an Elections Petition.
The decision to facilitate the recount was taken in accordance with Article 162 (1) (b) of the Constitution of Guyana, which mandates the Commission to “take such action as appear to it necessary or expedient to ensure impartiality, fairness and compliance with the provisions of the Constitution.” But while the Court of Appeal ruled out the possibility of CARICOM supervising the recount, the Elections Commission thought it wise to have CARICOM integrally involved in the process so as to lend it credence.
Source: https://issuu.com/guyanachroniclee-paper/docs/guyana_chronicle_epaper_02_05_2020_d288f666a15012