– DROs a ‘no-show’ at GECOM meeting
– Commission decides to exclude SoRs from tabulation
By Svetlana Marshall
THE Elections Secretariat has thus far reached a dead-end in its search for critical documents that were discovered missing when 29 ballot boxes from the East Coast of Demerara (ECD) were opened at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre; and an attempt to meet with the Deputy Returning Officers (DRO) responsible for those documents was met with ‘a no show’.
The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), headed by Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh, has since taken a decision to exclude the Statements of Recount (SORs) for those contentious ballot boxes, pending its decision.
The missing documents include counterfoils (used and unused ballots), Poll Books and marked Lists of Electors among other statutory documents; and an investigation by the Chief Elections Officer (CEO), Keith Lowenfield, has not, so far, been fruitful.
“The poll bags have been checked but the documents were not found,” GECOM Public Relations Officer, Yolanda Ward, said in a statement on Saturday. The boxes came from the Ogle Community Centre, Lusignan, Montrose Primary School, LBI Primary School, Chateau Margot Nursery and Primary Schools and Life Spring Ministries, among other areas.
The statutory documents were discovered missing on Thursday June 4, 2020 and Friday, June 5, 2020 and the issue was brought to the attention of the Elections Commission after the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) objected to the Statements of Recount generated for those ballot boxes being included in the tabulation exercise.
A meeting, according to Ward, was immediately convened by the Chair of GECOM with the Commissioners present at the Conference Centre at that time and the Chief Elections Officer.
“Following the discussions, the Commission decided that the SORs prepared for those ballot boxes should not be included in the tabulation at this point in time,” Ward explained. However, at the conclusion of the meeting, it was discovered that twenty-eight (28) of the twenty-nine (29) SORs were already tabulated.
As a result, the tabulation supervisor was advised to highlight those figures during the livestream on the ongoing tabulation for Region 4, pending a decision of the Commission. Further to that, the CEO was advised to investigate the reasons why the documents were not included in the ballot boxes and to ascertain where the documents could be found.
“It must be stated categorically that none of these missing documents are in the possession of the CEO. The poll bags have been checked but the documents were not found,” GECOM’s Public Relations Officer stated.
Importantly, some of the Deputy Returning Officers (DROs) responsible for those areas were invited to a meeting by the Chief Elections Officer on Saturday, and, while they committed to be present, they were a no show. “…as at 16:00hrs, no DRO showed up to be interviewed. Efforts would be made to contact the Presiding Officers who were responsible for the respective polling stations,” Ward noted.
The issue of the missing documents was the subject of a letter penned to the Chair of GECOM by the APNU+AFC on Saturday.
Lack of documents
Writing on behalf of APNU+AFC, Elections Agents Joseph Harmon and Minister Amna Ally said the lack of the critical documents has effectively affected the recount process. “There is no account and or explanation for the missing statutorily required documents. This means that there is no way for the Commission to verify that the ballots were issued to this polling station. Consequently the validity of any count from this box is in question,” Ally told the Elections Commission. It added: “Additionally, it cannot be substantiated that electors who cast ballot in these cases met the statutory requirements. In this circumstance the aforementioned Ballot Boxes should be set aside.”
The coalition, in the letter, also noted the limited ability of its agents to examine each and every ballot, and as such, they could not detect with any certainty the issues at hand.
“We continue to call for investigations and action in these matters and since the complaint of fraud is so clear, it is suggested that the Guyana Police Force can help GECOM to bring a speedy resolution to the issue,” APNU+AFC urged.
Weighing in on the issue on Friday, Elections Commissioner Vincent Alexander told reporters that the discoveries were strange, while pointing to the fact that the boxes originated from People’s Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/C) strongholds. “A significant number of boxes from Thursday into Friday were found with only ballots in their contents. The other documents, the Official List of Electors (OLE), the counterfoils, all those documents which [are] supposed to give information about who should have voted, are not in the box. This is strange, and what is even stranger is that it’s coming in a cluster. It’s not one far and in between. There are those who would argue there were similar instances prior, but I myself don’t recall a similar instance where absolutely nothing else other than ballots [is] in the box. Here we have this apparent cluster,” Alexander posited. In addition to the cluster, coincidentally or not, all these boxes reflect exceedingly high figures for the PPP/C. The Elections Commission will today convene a meeting to determine the way forward.
Source: https://issuu.com/guyanachroniclee-paper/docs/guyana_chronicle_e-paper_06-07-2020