Nine weeks after Guyanese cast their ballots at the General and Regional Elections, the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has finalized and published an Order which governs the national recount scheduled to begin tomorrow.
With the country facing a deepening political and economic crisis in the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the eight-page Order signed by Chairperson Justice (ret’d) Claudette Singh allows for the partial broadcasting of the counting process but prohibits the publication of either photos or video of the staff involved in the recount.
“The entire counting process will be audio streamed you’ll be hearing what’s happening [while at] the tabulation centre that entire process will be live streamed in terms of audio and video. Also what will be broadcast to the public is the state in which the ballot boxes are presented to the workstation,” Opposition-nominated Commissioner Sase Gunraj told reporters yesterday after days of sparring over the terms of the order.
The actual wording of the order provides that there shall be installed in each workstation a facility which shall capture and broadcast, only, the following: A picture of the ballot box depicting the state in which it is delivered to the workstation; An audio feed of the recount process while an audio-visual facility is expected to be established in the tabulation centre which shall broadcast live the entire tabulation process.
The provision represents a compromise on behalf of the Commission following stringent advocacy from the 10 opposition political parties.
These parties argued during a stakeholders’ meeting on Saturday at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, where the recount will take place, that given the public suspicion of the secretariat, a live streaming of the process would allow for transparency which would foster an acceptance of the eventual results.
Government-nominated Commissioner Vincent Alexander who had opposed the proposition said he is still concerned about its implementation.
“I have some difficulty with the proposition of broadcast…no one has explained how we can broadcast simultaneously 10 counting processes,” Alexander noted.
He stressed that the images of staff were not to be publicized and suggested that the commission had accepted a proposal from the incumbent to ban cellular phones from the counting and tabulation stations. He however could not confirm that a pronouncement was made to this effect and the Order makes no mention of any such directive.
What is does do is prescribe the methodology by which the votes cast will be recounted including the role and responsibilities of the three-member team from CARICOM which has been invited to scrutinize the process and give validity to the results.
According to the Order the recount shall commence with the allocation of 10 work stations as follows: District 1 – two work stations; District 2 – two work stations; District 3 – three work stations and District 4 – three work stations.
The recount for District 4 shall continue at the three work stations assigned to it while the recounts for Districts 5 through 10 shall be conducted based on the completion of, and at the work stations assigned to, Districts 1, 2 and 3.
Eight of the work stations will have a maximum of 14 persons comprising four GECOM staff, party agents and observers. Two work stations will have 10 persons. Coronavirus precautions are to be observed.
Entitled
The CARICOM team is entitled to be present during the recount and the regional tabulations which follow. At the end of the process they shall submit a report to the Commission which may include their observations, recommendations, and conclusions.
This is one of three potential reports the Commission will be reviewing at the end of the process. The other two are to be generated by Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield.
The Order specifies that a signed matrix produced following tabulation shall then be transmitted to the CEO, be tabulated and submitted in a report, together with a summary of the observation reports for each District, to the Commission.
Notably this report will not be considered for the declaration of results as prescribed by Section 96 of the Representation of the People Act Cap 1:03. The Order grants the Commission the discretion to decide whether or not they want the CEO to submit his final report.
“The Commission shall, after deliberating on the report at paragraph 12, determine whether it should request the Chief Election Officer to use the data compiled in accordance with paragraph 11 as the basis for the submission of a report under Section 96,” the provisions of the published Order stated.
GECOM is executing that recount as an exercise of the authority vested under Article 162 of the Constitution and pursuant to Section 22 of the Elections Law (Amendment) Act, No. 15 of 2000 in the Commission.
These provisions have been cited as “necessary and expedient for the removal of difficulties which have arisen in respect of the finalization and declaration of results for the General and Regional Elections held on the 2nd March 2020.”
The electoral crisis mushroomed over the count for District Four, when its Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo was accused on March 5th of presenting fictitious figures on a spreadsheet. Five major observer groups had found his tabulation not to be credible, including the CARICOM observer mission.
The Head of that mission, Cynthia Combie-Martyr had on March 6th urged that GECOM proceed with the establishment of the results for District Four in keeping with the law.
The CARICOM mission head had said in a statement that the mission accepted that the tabulation process which commenced on March 4th using the Statements of Poll and which was in accord with the law was interrupted and remained incomplete at that point.
Mingo’s tabulation was eventually declared null and void by the High Court but he then proceeded to repeat the process sparking the crisis that led to the first CARICOM bid to assist with the recount.
Qualms have been expressed in various parts of society over the recount given concerns that officials within GECOM are actively trying to rig the elections. GECOM Chair Singh has been severely criticised for poor management of the process.
