The lawyers for the opposition parties could also ask the court for certain orders one of which could include compelling GECOM to accept the recount based on the CARICOM report. One thing is certain, absolutely definite and scientifically conclusive – if Claudette Singh accepts the current submission of Lowenfield, then Guyana will face terrible consequences from disapproving international forces.
What Lowenfield submitted is only found in comic books. Powerful countries will consider the acceptance of the Lowenfield document a grotesque insult to international norms guiding democracy and a personal affront and thus will not continue to do business with Guyana. Once Singh votes in a four versus three formula for the Lowenfield report, the world will reject the Granger presidency.
The Lowenfield account of the 2020 election is so incredibly gruesome and horribly grotesque that no influential government that is friendly with Guyana will accept a Granger presidency. After what Barbadian Prime Minister, Mia Mottley said yesterday, it is clear that she will not be one of the CARICOM countries to recognize a Granger presidency. It is definite another CARICOM state, St. Vincent will not accept Granger as the president of Guyana.
Mottley asked a question that Singh will find impossible to answer – Who gave Lowenfield the right to dissolve 115, 000 votes? Here is the answer to that question. Guyana has 10 regions. In each region in a national election, there is a Returning Officer (RO) and a Deputy RO. When each RO submits his/her report, the Chief Election Officer (CEO) can only change those numbers based on investigation and resulting evidence.
So the CEO takes away 100 votes from Xanadu school in Region 1; 400 in Manadu school in Region 2; and 500 in Kanadu school in Region 3. This is a total of 1000 votes the CEO has rejected. But he can only do so after consulting with the ROs in those three Regions and showing them the evidence he has that those 1000 votes were fictional.
What Singh has to demand from Lowenfield irrespective of what is going on in the CCJ, because it is her obligation as chairperson, is to ask Lowenfield why he scrapped 115, 000 votes and where is the corroborating evidence from the ROs and DROs. What will take place in the CCJ on Wednesday has no bearing on what Singh has to do. She has the CEO’s tabulation in front of her that differs immensely from what the recount as certified by the CARICOM recount team. She has to demand an explanation.
A good example is the votes for the joint list team of A New And United Guyana (ANUG), The Liberty and Justice Party (LJP) and The New Movement (TMN).
The CARICOM supervised recount team came up with about 5000 votes. In the current report by Lowenfield, they got about 3000. How did those 2000 votes vanish? These are the questions Singh must ask ASAP from Lowenfield.
It is stupid for any lawyer, academic, politician and educated person to think that you have an election commission and it must accept the report of its Chief Elections Officer ki and legally there is no way that his report can be refused. It means then that elections are essentially a process that has no meaning and the only meaning given to it is by the Chief Elections Officer.
If Granger thinks that the CEO’s report is final and cannot be rejected even though it conflicts with the CARICOM team he invited, and whose professionalism he told Guyanese he recognizes, then not only the term ‘sanctimonious gangster’ is appropriate when applied to him but he is a basic fool.
Lowenfield has reduced Guyana, Granger, the PNC and AFC to clowns. You can tell by the tone of Mottley that she thinks that the election masquerade here has embarrassed the CARICOM region when she said, “it is not our finest moment.”
Lowenfield has now emerged as one of the most detestable citizens the world has produced. But he is also one of the silliest humans the world gave birth to. This man does the grizzliest things and believes the world will accept them. He wanted five months to recount 400, 000 ballots. Now he has taken away 115, 000 votes from an election with just the stroke of a pen. LO LO has stooped far too low to do his thing. He will be the subject of a criminal investigation for sure.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)