The Commissioners inquiring into the events surrounding the March 2, 2020 general elections yesterday visited the District Four office where many irregularities were said to have been spawned and they also inspected the room in which the GECOM chair was found locked away with a senior election officer and others at a crucial point in the proceedings.
The District Four office is located in the Ashmins building at High and Hadfield streets.
Recounting events to the three Commissioners and the Counsel to the Commission of Inquiry were the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Information Technology (IT) Manager and Tabulation Supervisor, Aneal Giddings; former executive member of The New Movement (TNM) Dr. Josh Kanhai; and the then Police Commander for Region #4 Edgar Thomas.
Kanhai who gave the initial overview, said that the tabulation room was located on the ground floor and it was in another enclosed room where GECOM IT Officer, Enrique LIvan was found with a flash drive claiming that he was working on some documents.
“When we noticed that the flash drive was missing we would’ve exited through the exit of the tabulation room and we would have proceeded to this door here (while pointing to an enclosed room on the said ground floor), this was where the GECOM staff were…where they were known to be in their break periods, so we came here and we saw that the door was a bit opened so we turned it…and that’s where we saw Mr. Livan. The printer was to the left corner of the room and the desk was to the right corner of the room and also some filing cabinets were there,” said Kanhai. He added that present with Livan was a GECOM staffer who was at the time resting her head on the table.
In earlier testimony before the Commission, it was said that after Livan had returned from his break where he had in his possession the flash drive, he started to read from a spreadsheet that he had printed out which was noted to have many discrepancies when compared to the Statements of Poll (SOPs) which were previously given to observers and members of other parties.
As they tried on March 5th, 2020 to serve an injunction and letters calling for recounts to the GECOM Chair, Justice (retired) Claudette Singh, Kanhai said he and other party representatives were blocked from accessing the second and third floors where the offices of the Chair, the Chief Election Officer (CEO) and Deputy Chief Election Officer (DCEO) offices were located.
“Yes, the second floor was being blocked up to the third floor….So when we had started in the afternoon to get a bit more agitated and tried to get our letters to the chairman we would’ve been on this floor (second floor) and we would have been campaigning for the chairman… just about in the afternoon the stairs to the third floor was completely blocked…blocked by the police officers…exactly on this point on the lower flat of this stairs here there were two officers blocking the entrance to the third floor…and way up there were more”, he told the commissioners.
The Chair’s office was on the third floor.
Pushed the door
Kanhai went on to explain that when they had finally gotten to force their way to the second floor, and then to the chair’s office on the third floor, they could not have entered since there was no lock or lever on the door to open it from the outside. He added that when they eventually forcefully pushed at the door in an effort to get it open, the Deputy Chief Election Officer (DCEO) Roxanne Myers was seen in the room with the GECOM Chair.
“This door was completely shut, it was not accessible since the handles were missing…the chair was sitting in a chair there (while pointing to an area in the room) and Myers was right next to her”, Kanhai said.
He noted that there were several other persons in the room with the Chair and DCEO but could not say who they were since he had never seen them before. He had also said that there was a room next to the Chair’s room which was heavily tinted, that room also had no lock or lever and could not be accessed from the outside, but only through Singh’s room, since there was a middle door that connected both rooms.
It is approaching three years since the events of March 2020 and there are still no answers as to why the locks on the doors had been taken off and who had done it.
In his testimony yesterday, Thomas said that he was the one who went to Singh’s office and other areas of the building to notify persons that there was a bomb scare.
“When I went up the step I went to the GECOM Chair’s office…and I went to several areas walking around announcing that there was a bomb scare…”, he said.
Asked by one of the Commissioners, Justice Stanley John if there was a room set up with big screen monitors so that the police could monitor every camera in and around the building, Thomas replied in the negative, saying, “I was not responsible for monitoring any activity in the building…I’m not certain who was, not the police from my knowledge or that were presently at the building monitoring anything.”
He also noted that only Special Branch Police Officers were allowed to be on the second and third floors.
As it relates to the sudden appearance of a scanner on the third floor at the Receipt Station in the Ashmins building, Giddings, the IT Manager was asked by the Counsel for the Commission, Sophia Chote SC, if he was aware of the time when the scanner was placed there and he replied in the negative. Giddings said, “I won’t be able to say, I discovered it when I indicated and it could have been that it was there before.”
The IT Manager yesterday recalled that there was an empty room next to Myers’ office which was on the second floor that was never used during the election process, however, on March
4th, he said that there was a meeting there with the “heads of the observers unit” and a “government official.” When asked who the official was, he indicated that it was then Foreign Minister Dr Karen Cummings. He further noted that he still isn’t aware what the meeting was about.
Along with Justice John, the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the March 2020 elections comprises two other Commissioners: Godfrey P. Smith, SC of Belize and former Chancellor (ag) of the Guyana Judiciary, Carl Singh.
The inquiry will continue today.
