With his contract coming to an end in March, the People’s Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/C)- nominated commissioners on the Guyana Elections Com-mission (Gecom) yesterday said that they lack confidence in the Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield.
At a press conference at the PPP headquarters, Commissioner Robeson Benn made the comments based on the fact that there is an audit into the procurement of items for Gecom for the May, 2015 general and regional elections.
The items, including pliers and high frequency communications radio sets, for which millions of dollars were paid, were procured while Lowenfield served as accounting officer. The audit is expected to be released soon.
Benn said too that Lowenfield had made an application to strike out PPP/C Member of Parlia-ment, Ganga Persaud’s petition with respect to the results of the May 2015 elections.
This, he and the other two PPP/C commissioners Sase Gunraj and Bibi Shadick believe, is the CEO’s way of delaying the court proceedings, frustrating the process and not allowing the court to review it.
They are of the view that the application by the CEO, who is tasked to “uphold the transparency and integrity of the elections process of the country, is perverse.”
Gunraj said that the application to have the petition struck out seems to be personal but the cost of almost $7M is being borne by Gecom.
He said the Representa-tion of the People Act, which governs the conduct of elections in Guyana, sets out the procedure for the results to be challenged in the court.
The act also specifies that the CEO “must be the respondent in those proceedings because he is the custodian of all of the results, the materials and the information leading up to the elections and he is the source through which the results are generated.”
He is of the view that the CEO is not deemed to be a combatant but the law requires that he be deemed a facilitator of the information and the process as it is being reviewed in the court.
He said that “after the court ruled that there is no grounds ….to strike out the petition and has in fact, struck out his [Lowenfield’s] application to strike out the petition, what we have is an appeal being filed against that ruling of Chief Justice [Ian] Chang.”
Lowenfield appealed then Chief Justice Chang’s decision and this natter is still before the High Court.
Gunraj said too that the chairman of Gecom, Dr Steve Surujbally has the responsibility for calling meetings but since last August only three have been held, two of which were deemed “special meetings.”
A meeting was held in September to deal with the eighth cycle of continuous registration, noting that there are certain decisions that have to be taken by the commission regarding the continuous registration process.
Surprised
No other meeting was held but the commissioners were surprised to see notices in the newspapers about the commencement of the ninth cycle of registration.
They also found it surprising that the notice came from the chairman who had indicated to the commission that he would be resigning by a certain date but yet the signing took place after that date.
He noted that following “interventions by my colleagues, that process was stayed and the orders were revoked… and we had a next set of orders after we had a meeting to discuss that process.”
In the absence of meetings, some aspects of the commission are affected, including the registration process and decisions that were taken months ago that required feedback.
He said these situations can lead to the belief that there is a plan to “shut down the elections commission or worse, to allow Gecom to function in the absence of oversight of the commission.”
He said too that they “had to fight tooth and nail to get information for the eighth cycle of registration and up to now some of the information that we have requested have not been forthcoming.”
Lowenfield’s contract comes to an end on March 13 and Gunraj said the contract contains a clause which says that if the CEO wishes to continue in that position, he has to serve notice three months before the expiry date.
A few months ago, at one of the “special meetings,” discussion of the contract was a substantive item on the agenda but Gunraj said it was not seen fitting to call meetings to address more pressing issues.
Meanwhile, Shadick said that they had taken some decisions to capture all information during the registration, electronically.
She pointed out that the 2017 budget catered for the digital house-to-house registration to begin in the second quarter of this year.
However, over $2B of that budget was cut and at a meeting held two weeks ago the PPP/C commissioners learnt that the cut was for the registration.
