Holding one’s breath for an expeditious, transparent and credible recount of the votes (Part IV)

The U.S. Treasury Department last Friday imposed sanctions against the head of the Nicaraguan army and the country’s finance minister because of the Ortega regime’s increasing tendency towards authoritarianism and more specifically its ‘continued violations of basic human rights, blatant corruption, and widespread violence against the Nicaraguan people’. The sanctions include freezing of all their U.S. assets and the banning of American companies, including banks with U.S. offices, from doing business with them. The United States has already imposed sanctions on the President and his family as well as other high-ranking government officials, including the Head of the National Assembly and the Ministers of Health and Transport. According to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo:

The United States will continue to apply pressure to the Ortega regime until it stops repressing the Nicaraguan people, respects human rights and fundamental freedoms, and allows the conditions for free and fair elections and the restoration of democracy in Nicaragua.

Today marks 84 days since the 2020 general and regional elections were held in Guyana. However, a declaration is still to be made as to the winner of these elections although the law provides for such declaration to be made within 15 days of the holding of the polls. For the 2015 elections, the declaration was made within five days. Given the problems associated with the  original declaration of the results for Region 4, and its outright rejection by all the local and international observers as well as the political parties contesting the elections (except APNU+AFC) as having lacked transparency and credibility, a recount was brokered by the Chair of CARICOM. The exercise is currently underway, and after 18 days less than half the number of ballot boxes have been recounted. 

     In today’s article, we continue from where we left off last week by providing an update on developments in the last week regarding the recount exercise.

Media briefing by the President

   On 10 May, the President held a media briefing in which he contradicted the Attorney General and another APNU+AFC lawyer as regards the legitimacy of the recount exercise. He stated that ‘[a]s President of Guyana and leader of the government, it is my policy that any declaration coming from the chairman of GECOM will be accepted by the Government of Guyana. I speak for the Government of Guyana’. The statement also contradicts an earlier comment by a government-appointed commissioner who had suggested that the results of the recount do not necessarily mean that the Commission would use them as a basis of declaring the winner.

       The President’s statement should, however, be treated with guarded optimism, as there may be forces at work to undermine the recount exercise. One recalls that as soon as the agreement with the Chair of CARICOM was reached for the recount and for the presence of a high-level CARICOM team to observe the exercise, one of the APNU+AFC’s candidates for the elections questioned the validity of the presence of the CARICOM team. She sought judicial intervention that caused the original team to abort the exercise. 

     The President expressed confidence in the present CARICOM team’s integrity and ability to observe the recount, stating that he shared the sentiment by the Barbadian Ambassador to the OAS that CARICOM is ‘the most important interlocutor on the Guyana situation’. His reaction was in direct reference to the Government’s refusal to allow the Carter Center to return to observe the recount, citing restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This was despite the fact that, apart from the CARICOM team, several flights arrived in the country with ExxonMobil workers on board. Only last week, the COVID-19 Task Force approved for some 300 Guyanese stranded overseas to return to Guyana, subject to certain conditions. The Center had given the assurance that all the relevant COVID-19 guidelines would be followed.

      The Carter Center was one of the five main overseas missions to have been granted approval to observe the elections, the other four being CARICOM, the EU, the OAS and the Commonwealth Secretariat. These missions, along with the diplomats from the ABCE countries, have been scathing in their criticisms  of what transpired on 5 and 13 March in relation to the tabulation of the results for Region 4, and have issued damning statements to this effect. One recalls the comment by the head of the OAS mission Bruce Golding that he had never seen ‘a more transparent effort to alter the results of an election … it takes an extraordinarily courageous mind to present fictitious numbers when such a sturdy paper trail exists’.

Mr. Golding might not have realized that it was not the sole effort by the Returning Officer (RO) of Region 4 to manipulate the results. Rather, the evidence is overwhelming that manipulation of the results was part of a rather a larger conspiracy involving officials from APNU+AFC, considering the declaration bearing the signature of a senior ranking official from the PNC (the main component of APNU), the utterances of senior officials of the coalition, and the fact that the APNU+AFC to date has not seen it fit to condemn the actions of the RO.

It is evident that the Government’s refusal of the Carter Center to be allowed to observe the recount had nothing to do with COVID-19. Rather, it was due to the critical statement that the Center has made in relation to the tampering of Region 4’s tabulation by inflating the votes for the APNU+AFC and in some cases reducing the votes for the opposition PPP/C.  In its most recent statement, the Center expressed disappointment that the Government ‘chose not to demonstrate a genuine commitment to transparency…by ensuring that all duly accredited organisations, including the Carter Center, be allowed be allowed to conduct their work’. 

The current composition of the COVID-19 Task Force offers no comfort in that it comprises officials from one side of the political divide who may be more than tempted to make decisions based on political considerations rather than on objective and impartial analyses of facts and pertinent arguments. In this regard, we had suggested that the Task Force be revamped to comprise trained and competent medical personnel, including the Chief Medical Officer as the chair.   

Concerns about the validity of the Returning Officers’ declarations

GECOM had stated that the declarations by the ten ROs, including that of the RO for Region 4, remain valid unless they are replaced by the results of the recount. This appears to suggest that, should the recount exercise not reach a satisfactory conclusion as a basis for declaring the winner of the elections, GECOM will revert to the original declarations of the ROs to make the declaration of the winner of the elections. It is in this regard that the President’s statement that ‘any declaration coming from the chairman of GECOM will be accepted’, should be viewed. It would have been more comforting if the President had qualified his statement by indicating clearly and unequivocally that any such declaration must reflect the will of the electorate.   

Given the mounting evidence of the inflation of the tabulation results for Region 4 in favour of the APNU+AFC, as borne out so far during the recount exercise, one would therefore have to question GECOM’s decision to include the results for Region 4. The Carter Center has made it clear that the preparations for the elections were satisfactory, and that voting on elections day was orderly and met international standards. However, while the tabulation for the other nine regions was transparent, credible and met international standards, the same could not be said of the of Region 4. The Center concluded that:

An accurate and honest counting of votes is essential to ensuring that the election reflects the will of the people. Even if pre-election and election day processes go well, a flawed vote count or vote tabulation can fatally undermine the integrity and credibility of the electoral process and decrease public confidence and public acceptance of the results. The electoral dispute-resolution process and the extent to which citizens, voters, candidates, and other stakeholders have the right to an effective remedy is also a critical element of any electoral process.

Status of recount

As of last Saturday (Day 18), a total of 1,049 out of 2,339 ballot boxes, or 44.8 percent, were open and counted. This gives an average daily count of 58 boxes. At this rate, it will take 41 days for the exercise to be completed, putting the estimated completion date for the recount to 16 June.  So far, except for minor discrepancies, the recount as shown in the Statements of Recount (SOR) matches the SOPs that have been prepared at the close of polls and posted at the various polling stations.

So far, the recount of Region 1 and Region 2 has been completed and the related SORs signed off by all the political parties, except APNU+AFC in the case of the latter. The representative objected to the words ‘valid votes’ by virtue of that party’s claim of certain irregularities.

Comparison of SOPs, SORs and Region 4 declaration

A comparison of the RO’s tabulation for Region 4 with those of the SOPs and the SORs, continued to show an inflation in the number of votes cast in favour of the APNU+AFC. Last week, we reported the Head of the OAS Observer Mission and former Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding identifying four ballot boxes where this was so. In its yesterday’s edition, the Kaieteur News identified 23 ballot boxes where the results were tampered with by reducing the votes for the PPP/C by 341 and inflating those for APNU+AFC by 1,068. The table below, extracted from the Kaieteur News article, shows the results of the recount for ten of the 23 ballot boxes for Region 4. 

Unverified allegations of irregularities in the observation reports

GECOM has been publishing observation reports of the recount that include allegations by the APNU+AFC of irregularities, without the Commission first investigating the merits or otherwise of such allegations. These include voting by electors who were either dead or were out of the jurisdiction on the date of the elections. Needless to mention, apart from the elaborate controls in place on Elections Day to prevent these irregularities from happening, they have nothing to do with the recount exercise.

Amid criticisms of GECOM’s decision to publicise the allegations as well as statements emanating from two commissioners and a senior APNU+AFC member, the Chair was forced to state that ‘[w]hile I continue to monitor the trends based on the allegations in the observation reports, I am of the view that, he who asserts must prove’. The APNU+AFC member and one commissioner had  argued that the onus is on GECOM to disprove the allegations while the other commissioner stated that the Chair is of the view that it is not GECOM’s role to investigate the allegations. The latter has since apologized for this statement.