Dear Editor,
While I am no lawyer, please permit me to give my views on the present elections impasse. To me the laws are logical, and if anyone challenges me on the logics of the law, then they will be admitting that the law is illogical.
In late March, I penned a letter to the Editor that was given the caption: “Verify Voters’ Whereabouts” GC March, 24th 2020, where I posited that for a process to be deemed credible, it had to pass some litmus tests. I went on to paint some scenarios that could be presented that would make the process not credible.
My writings were prophetic. I was pleased however to see that the recount process followed, in general, some of my recommendations.
Now we are at this stage where some are insinuating that the laws are illogical.
First of all let me point out Section 96 of the Representation of the People Act, Part XI Ascertainment of Elections Results:
“The Chief Elections Officer shall calculate the total number of valid votes of electors which have been cast for each list of Candidates and thereupon shall ascertain the results of the elections in accordance with Sections 97 and 98 of the Representation of the People Act.”
Implicit in this section is the fact that:
1. The Chief Elections Officer, and by extension, the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), has to set aside votes which are deemed invalid before calculating the number of valid votes cast. Given the Guyana context, we all know that not all votes are valid, hence the act of separation. This is but a mere administrative activity that needs no court to pronounce on.
2. A valid vote is one that meets the requirements set out by GECOM, and for which all Polling Day Staff were trained and practiced in. Any deviation from those practices will deem such votes not valid. We saw a plethora of such in the re-count.
3. Any reference to votes in relation to elections where the outcome is to be determined is a reference to valid votes.
It is that regard that the Commission was careful to insert by way of an Addendum dated 29th May 2020, the following:
“Paragraph 14 of the Order is hereby amended to read as follows:
The Commission shall, after deliberating on the report at paragraph 12, determine whether it should request the Chief Elections Officer to use the data compiled in accordance with paragraph 12 as the basis for the submission of a report under Section 96 of the Representation of the People Act Chapter 1:03 provided that the Commission shall, no later than three days after receiving the report, make a declaration of the results of the final credible count of the elections held on the 2nd day of March, 2020.”
By this amendment, the Commission was cognisant of the need to use only valid votes to arrive at credibility, since any vote that was not valid and was included in the re-count will not render the elections credible. That fact did not escape the Commission when they made this amendment to the original Order.
This was further emphasised in the preliminaries to the Final Plan for Recount of General and Regional Elections 2020, a document prepared by GECOM.
The document states thus:
“The goal of the National Recount is to provide results of the General and Regional Elections 2020 which are credible.”
It went on to state further:
“The Commission has agreed that the singular objective of the National Recount is to ensure the final count of votes cast in the Elections is accurate and meets the credibility criteria.”
At item m in the document this is what was supposed to happen:
“At the end of the National Recount exercise, the CEO will compile a cumulative statement of the final count for all ten Districts. This report of the National final count will include information on the number of votes cast for each list of Candidates and a summation of the Observation Reports of anomalies for submission to the Commission to determine the finality of the count.”
This item is a clear indication of what was to be done at the Commission level, but was not done because the Chairman suddenly realised that she could not “clothe itself with jurisdiction to establish itself as a Court of Law to determine the credibility of an election.”
Well that was already done from the time she made Order 60/2020. That Order effectively transformed GECOM into a Court of Law to adjudicate matters that were usually meant for an Elections Petition.
Another grave dereliction of duty of the Chairman is the fact that she admitted that some of the allegations are of a serious nature and must be addressed. She did not say how, or by whom.
I want to respectfully posit that the Chairman have that authority. The serious matters she was alluding to are of an administrative nature that the Commission can deal with.
In other words she is saying that I could have procured 3,000 seventeen year-olds to vote and the Commission could do nothing about that once it was brought to their attention? I’d rather think not.
In abdicating her responsibility, she is pandering to unseen forces. She has already established GECOM as a court of law. If she cannot adjudicate on the validity of votes then this whole Recount is a farce and should be discarded by a proper Court of Law.
Coming back to Order 4 in the Addendum, it speaks to the CEO using data compiled to inform his report to the Commission. What comprised that data?
Let me remind your readership:
• Missing Poll Books
• Ballot Boxes with no supporting documents inside, just marked ballots
• Missing counterfoils
• Ballots from one Region in another Region’s box
• More ballots in boxes than what were supposed to be at particular Polling Stations
• Unsigned Certificates of employments
• Improperly issued Proxys
• Dead people Voting
• Overseas based Guyanese voting even though they were not in Guyana on elections day
• Un-used Ballot papers missing, among others.
Editor, this is the information that GECOM ought to have used to determine valid votes cast at the elections. These issues are administrative ones and need no court to rule on.
The Chairman of the Commission knew from day one that she was not going to complete the process. This evidence is contained in Whereas number two of the original Order. The whereas states thus:
“Wheras…proposal for a total recount of all Electoral Districts as a means of assuaging the contesting Parties and determining a final credible count.
While the determining of a final credible count is once again mentioned, the Chairman showed her intentions not to proceed to the conclusion. The word assuaging was used.
The meaning of that word is as follows:
Make, especially an unpleasant feeling, less intense. Similar words will include relieve, ease, alleviate, soothe, mitigate, dampen, calm, suppress, smother, stifle, subdue. From all of her actions to date, the Chairman obviously is trying to supress and subdue the Coalition. And why not? Everybody else is doing it, even the CARICOM team which examined 423 ballot boxes out of 2,339 and found missing documents in 29 of them.
Yours faithfully,
Carl Parker
Source: https://issuu.com/guyanachroniclee-paper/docs/guyana_chronicle_epaper_06_22_2020