IN an absolutely astounding development in neighbouring Guyana, six weeks after crucial elections were held there on March 2, the chief elections officer of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has now put on the table a proposal that seems designed to create even more acrimony than has already been generated.
Mr Keith Lowenfield has suggested a purported timetable for recounting all of the votes cast in the elections to be completed in 156 days. Such a timetable amounts to 26 days short of a half-year. By any standard, this is nothing short of ludicrous, and points to conclusions long since shared by eminent persons concerned with this situation that dark forces are working to frustrate the will of the Guyanese people.
When she supported the decision by the team of Caricom elections officials to quit the assignment which they never really got started two weeks after the elections had been taken place, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said there were such forces at work. The Barbados leader is the current chairman of Caricom. An agreement was signed between sitting President David Granger and the Leader of the Opposition party in the Guyanese National Assembly for the recount of the votes in Region 4. Based on this, a team of election officials, including the chief of the Trinidad and Tobago Elections and Boundaries Commission, was set up to oversee the counting. They had been assembled and were on the ground.
An attempt to declare the elections on March 5 was halted, with a slew of international observer missions having concerns over the manner in which that declaration was to be made. There was a first injunction which called for a stay in the declaration of results, and a properly conducted recount, only of the Region 4 votes, with observers present. But no sooner this was settled with an appropriate court ruling, a second injunction was filed, challenging this decision, and asking the court not to recognise the undertaking given in writing by the country’s president, and the opposition Leader, a former president himself.
As this increasingly embarrassing situation kept unfolding before a mesmerised world, all of the international observer missions began leaving the country one by one, driven partly by the ever closing of international borders due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Those missions, including ones from the Commonwealth, the OAS and Caricom, all came away convinced of the sinister nature of behind-the- scenes manipulations.
Prominent and eminent Guyanese citizens at home and abroad also began speaking out, calling on the sitting president to do the right thing, and not be corralled by forces around him deemed to be inimical to the will of the people. These included the country’s former defence chief, Joe Singh, and one of its most distinguished diplomats, Rudy Insanally.
Coming this late in the game, Mr Lowenfield’s suggestion for a total recount of votes, to be conducted over so long a period, was immediately rejected out of hand by the opposition member on the GECOM. It had the effect of only rubbing salt in an already festering wound to the Guyanese body-politic.
It cannot, and must not be allowed to stand, in the name of public decency, and in defence of the will of a proud people and their democracy.