Dear Editor,
Expectedly, my characterization of Vincent Alexander in relation to the rigging at GECOM earned his wrath, as expressed in a letter, published in Sunday Stabroek, April 26, 2020 headed `I hold no brief for Mingo’s declaration’. I stand resolutely by that description. Alexander expects that the design being executed at GECOM, thinly veiled by pseudo-intellectual verbiage, which he disseminates to the Press after every GECOM meeting, will not be detected. It is the same audacity, nay, idiocy, which persuaded the conspirators to believe that Clairmont Mingo will be able to execute their fraudulent plan by use of a manufactured spreadsheet, in the presence of the entire diplomatic community, international and local observer teams and representatives of the political parties.
The inconvenient truth is that Alexander and his like never wanted the recount. Naively, they were determined to enforce and prosecute Mingo’s fraudulent declaration to the very end. I distinctly recall the livid rage on Alexander’s face and his subsequent fulminations when I read to the Chief Justice, at Diamond/Grove Magistrate’s Court, on Saturday March 14, 2020, the Statement from the Chairperson of CARICOM, indicating that President David Granger and Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo had agreed to a recount of the ballots. The Commissioners and the Chairperson were present in the Court. It was the first time they were being made aware of this Agreement. Although the Court adjourned for half of an hour, for everyone to confirm the Statement and familiarize themselves with its content, and notwithstanding that the Chairperson was advised via telephone by the General Counsel of CARICOM that the Statement was actually issued and so informed the Court, an angry Alexander instructed his hapless lawyers to report to the Court that he was unaware of any such Statement. So from the inception, I was aware that despite the President’s commitment to CARICOM to do a recount, the other co-conspirators were not going to be willing participants.
I am fortified by everything I have seen, thereafter. At a Commission meeting, later that evening, the Government Commissioners refused to acknowledge the CARICOM Statement and immediately began to execute a plan to undermine the proposed recount. For example, they began to clamour for the signatures of the President and Leader of the Opposition to the document. Thus, the Aide Memoire was born. It is a two-sentence document which took the President three days to sign. Then came the fumigation, for COVID-19, of the Arthur Chung Convention Centre, although the facility was not used for over six months prior. These dithering tactics were all employed to give the other co-conspirators time to prepare legal proceedings to be filed in the name of Ulita Moore to rescind the CARICOM initiative, prohibit the recount and declaring Mingo’s fraudulent results, as valid and lawful. This litigious resort failed and did not bear the desired fruit. But Alexander remained undaunted and continued in the Commission, as the main protagonist, in prosecuting a design to thwart and frustrate the recount process, at every step of the way. Now unmasked, he is agitated.
His insistence, that the declarations of all the Returning Officers and Lowenfield’s Report, tainted by Mingo’s fraudulent declaration, remain valid, is but only one thread in that sinister fabric which he weaves. He is quite right, when he contends that he made no specific reference to Mingo’s declaration. He did so intentionally knowing full well that it is too risky to openly embrace Mingo’s fraudulent declaration, by itself, so he espouses for them all. But in reality, it is Mingo’s declaration that he is protecting. That is part of the guile. As it is Mingo’s flawed declaration which takes his party to victory. As I explained before, if for any reason, the recount process is aborted or declared a nullity, the status quo ante the recount would have to prevail. Hence the reason for keeping these declarations and Lowenfield’s Report intact.
Alexander argues, quite simplistically, that no Court has pronounced that Mingo’s declaration and Lowenfield’s Report are unlawful and therefore, they are not. That GECOM, itself, has refused to act upon those two documents but chooses to do a recount of the ballots, instead, without more, defeats Alexander’s argument. It means that like the rest of the world, excepting Alexander and his clique, GECOM, either expressly or by implication, has accepted that Mingo’s declaration is poisoned by fraud and therefore not valid. Alexander’s lawyers would advise him that fraud “unravels everything”, that is to say, any decision, action, or document tainted by fraud, is void ab initio and a nullity. As Lord Denning famously remarked in Mac Foy v United Africa Co. Ltd (1961) 3 All ER, “a void act or order is automatically void without more ado; it does not have to be set aside by a Court to render it void, although for convenience only, it may be sometimes necessary to have the Court set it aside.” I, along with dozens of others, witnessed, firsthand, the fraud perpetrated at GECOM which led to the Mingo figures. A Court pronounced that the first declaration was unlawful. Mingo resumed the tabulation process, using the identical method which the Chief Justice, mere hours before, declared unlawful. Yet, Alexander wants us to recognize that perverse second declaration as lawful.
Alexander’s insinuation that Commissioners at GECOM are “independent” of the political parties whom they represent is simply puerile. The Opposition Commissioners are duty bound to represent the instructions of the political party upon whose nomination they are appointed. If Alexander believes that people do not recognize that he is executing the political agenda of Congress Place, then he is more disoriented than I thought.
Yours faithfully,
Anil Nandlall
