Jun 06, 2020 News
– invites separate submission from ANUG
GECOM Chair Justice (ret’d) Claudette Singh has upheld a decision by CEO Keith Lowenfield presenting any reference to Clairmont Mingo’s fraudulent vote tabulation in recount observer reports, but has invited a separate submission from A New and United Guyana (ANUG) on Mingo’s actions.
During an interview with Kaieteur News last evening, representative of ANUG Kian Jabour chronicled an attempt made by his party to note numbers which have been unearthed from the national recount but differed from the declarations that have been made by Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo during his controversial tabulation of the region’s state of polls. During the attempt to record the information Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield had arrived during the week at one of the workstations and instructed the supervisors not to include in the observation report any claims of irregularities with Mingo’s infamous tabulations.
Against this Jabour said, “ I approached him on the matter and I brought up the provision in the order which clearly states that any party is allowed to make an allegation as long as it is correctly worded on the observation report. He let me know that this is a different scenario and that he could not allow that.”
The party representative went on to say that there was a back and forth between him and Lowenfield in the context that GECOM was allowing unproven “evidence” of death certification and immigration records in those reports, but stanchly refused to note an observation which has been proven in numerous articles by Kaieteur News.
“We have a problem with that. It shows that you are taking a bias; you are only showing certain party’s allegations, but you’re not giving the other parties the same courtesy,” Jabour argued.
He highlighted that out of frustration he personally visited the GECOM Chair and made it known to her his concerns while adding, “she made it known that the recount only has two more days to go… She had let me know that she will be accepting a report from us directly towards her and the Commission which will point out the fraudulent numbers that are now being uncovered in the recount.”
Jabour disclosed that the party is currently putting together a report to state that they are in possession of “credible evidence and recordings to show that Mingo’s numbers were fraudulent, and we will be submitting that as a public document to the Commission before the end of this recount,” he told this publication.
According to Jabour his party has only now decided to raise Mingo’s inflated numbers, even though several boxes have already been recounted, because the Commission “has used these allegations in the Observation Report to go ahead and receive information from central immigration officer/ Commissioner of Police, on allegations being made. Once we saw that very active approach to allegations we believed that all allegations needed to be made on that OR in order to get a clear, fair and balanced picture of what we have observed during these elections. If we only have one side making allegations on that observation report it will appear as if fraudulent elections have taken place and nothing has been refuted.”
The ANUG representative was keen to highlight in his conclusion that his party is fearful that the observation report will be used to make a plethora of further fraudulent allegations.
Notably, Kaieteur News had published an article on Thursday which stated a supervisor working at GECOM refused to note an observation by The Citizenship Initiative (TCI) that the tabulation by Mingo, in one instance, inflated the votes of the governing Coalition.
TCI Presidential Candidate Rondha-Ann Lam had said that for Ballot Box 4589 attached to a polling station at Plaisance Primary School, she noticed that the number called by Mingo for the tabulation which led to his March 13 declaration was higher than the number arrived at, during the recount. Lam indicated that she asked the supervisor to note the inflation.
“The supervisor sought clarity and came back to say, we are only dealing with what is found in the boxes,” Lam posted.
“All of the observations are recorded, but this is the first time that the small parties have been meted out with this. I have proof of 25 boxes that were ‘Mingo’ed’.”