As the National Recount of votes moves inexorably to its end, the unfounded complaints of the incumbent APNU+AFC have become shriller. Its Campaign Manager and Elections Agent, Joseph Harmon stated on Saturday that the governing coalition had written 11 apparently unrequited letters to GECOM and he demanded answers. Did any of these missives pertain to the vulgarities of Mr Mingo? The lack of a response by GECOM to Mr Harmon may no doubt be due to the insuperable dilemma posed by the letters. The acrobatic act being attempted by APNU+AFC to pretend to be cheated of votes while still claiming victory has not yet been invented and may require a few more generations. When developed it will no doubt be worthy of a prize more vaunted than gold at Olympic gymnastics, perhaps a medal made of red gold from Mars. After confidently and repeatedly claiming victory on the rigged Mingo numbers, APNU+AFC apparently now has to come to grips with the reality of the recount hence its 360-degree turn in alleging widespread irregularities on March 2nd.
When it won the elections by the slenderest of margins in 2015 there was not a word from it about all of these infernal allegations that have come to the fore now even though the machinery was under the control of virtually the same people now in place including the Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield. It was even granted access to Statements of Poll (SoPs) then although it has zealously concealed those in this election cycle. The incredible claims by Mr Harmon and APNU+AFC would suggest that the GECOM Secretariat and thousands of polling day staff were incompetent, corrupt or both. It would be interesting to see how Mr Lowenfield and his Secretariat respond to the claims of Mr Harmon when they submit their report in the coming days on the recount of votes to GECOM.
The incredulousness of the claims has not stopped Mr Harmon and others from making the most egregious and inflammatory allegations. One of the more recent ones pertained to the votes of the Disciplined Services. Mr Harmon’s contention in a May 25th Facebook video was that “A vast number of Disciplined Services men and women, their votes were not counted… It was clear that the majority of the Disciplined Services were in support of the APNU+AFC and it would appear to be a calculated effort to ensure that those votes, which they knew were to come our way, would be deemed invalid”. Mr Harmon went on to say that members of the Disciplined Services have expressed disgust and anger at this state of affairs.
Apart from crassly politicising the votes of the Disciplined Services, this is a bald-faced lie and should be flagged by Facebook as such. It has apparently inspired others such as GDF veteran George Gomes who in a letter in the May 30th edition of Stabroek News stated: “That over eight thousand (8,000) Disciplined Services votes were not stamped in the PPP strongholds in Districts 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6, is not accidental or coincidental. This was a deliberate large-scale rigging attempt by the PPP.
“Our members of the Disciplined Services are loyal and patriotic citizens, and it is their democratic right to vote and have their votes counted.
“This is my call to GECOM to ensure our Disciplined Services votes are counted. This is an imperative”.
It should be noted that ballot papers are stamped by the Presiding Officer at the polling stations and not by party agents. Further and importantly, there is no way to distinguish votes by Disciplined Services voters from any other voter in the current recount as these were mixed at the assigned polling stations with ballots from those stations to ensure secrecy. So far, only a small number of ballot papers have been discovered not to have been stamped. Therefore there is no basis for saying that over 8,000 ballots for Disciplined Services voters were not stamped. This is a highly irresponsible and inflammatory statement.
It is all the more reason why the recount entering its 27th day today must be swiftly concluded and the result of the March 2nd General and Regional Elections finally declared. The amended recount order gazetted on Friday says that the recount should be concluded no later than June 13th. It appears that at the current pace the recount should be over several days before this. GECOM must lose no time in proceeding to finalise the recount.
As we pointed out in a news item in Saturday’s edition, the addendum to the recount order contains lacunae for further delays. Mr Lowenfield would have up June 13th (hopefully earlier) to tabulate matrices for the recount of the 10 Electoral Districts and submit same in a report, together with a summary of the observation reports for each District, to the Commission.
GECOM will then deliberate on this report and then decide whether it should ask Mr Lowenfield to use this data for the presentation of a final report in accord with the Representation of the People Act Cap 1:03. By a majority vote, GECOM has then set itself a maximum of three days after the receipt of the final report for a declaration of the result.
It is not clear how long GECOM might deliberate on the first report neither is there any timeline set for the CEO to deliver his final report. These ambiguities in the addendum to the order can introduce further delays and we urge that the GECOM Chair, Justice (Ret’d), Claudette Singh ensures that there is no further time wasting. Ms Singh’s actions will be closely watched in light of the spurious claims by APNU+AFC and the intended presentation of records of deaths and entries and departures from the country to GECOM which aim to show that there were irregularities on polling day. Ms Singh would be aware from the outset that none of those claims made by APNU+AFC have anything to with a credible recount of votes. Second, the presentation of these documents are not on their own evidence of anything but belong – if anywhere at all – in an election court. Ms Singh must do what she has thus far comprehensively failed to do: stamp her authority on the process and deliver the recount result to the nation.
