…AG says

By Gabriella Chapman
THE Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Basil Williams SC, has said that the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) gerrymandered the March 2 elections, and given the purpose and what the national recount process entails, all the unscrupulous acts of the opposition will be revealed.

Speaking with the media on Saturday, Williams said that he is in receipt of information based on numerous acts of skullduggery committed by the opposition, and as time goes on, “these things will be revealed and the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) will have to make a decision on what to do with the information.”

“What is clear on the outset of this recount is the discrepancies, the clear attempts on the part of the opposition, at gerrymandering the elections, and at the end of the process, these decisions will have to be addressed by GECOM,” Williams, a senior counsel, said.
Williams also reiterated the stance of several other ministers who remarked on previous days, that this recount system is not just simply counting the ballots. “This system is run in which you look at poll books, you look to see how many people GECOM fixed to vote at a polling station, and how many voted. It’s a system in which you have to look at the discrepancies which occurred. It’s a holistic approach that they have. If you have 188 persons fixed by GECOM to vote at a polling station, and 259 voted, what do you do? So you can’t just count the ballots. What you do you do with excess voting,” AG posited.
In fact, he said the example given is a true scenario.

“We certainly have cases like that. I know of a case in Mahaica, where 188 people slated to vote and 259 voted. We have situations where our votes have gone to other parties. We have situations where our votes have been given to ANUG, 338 or so. A presiding officer posted results, and posted that we had no votes and we had 277. So these things will come up,” he disclosed.

Stating further, that this was discovered from the copies of the Statements of Poll (SOP) that their party is in receipt of, Williams said that the only SOPs relevant under elections laws are the ones GECOM has, and that is the reason his party has not released their SOPs.
Giving more grounds to substantiate his case of gerrymandering, AG cited an encounter he witnessed during the declaration of Region Four results. “There was a situation, I was there at GECOM’s office in Ashmin’s building because as the East Coast chairman, I had to go there for the ascertaining of the votes by the Region Four returning officer.

They told us that we were entitled to three persons at our table, we started and about half hour later, there was an invasion by members of the opposition, including the opposition leader. And so I got up and I indicated to them that they were only allowed three persons, I made that protest and they left. But I subsequently left the room, only to see a reinvasion. No one has to tell me, I was there. The observers that were there, of course never raised any complaints about the behaviour of the PPP and they (the opposition) largely contributed to the reason why the declaration of Region Four votes were not completed, so to speak,” he said.

The non-completion of the count had resulted in the opposition going to the court and the Chief Justice had said as the count was not completed, Region Four’s Returning Officer, Clairmont Mingo, should go back and complete it.

“And he (Mingo) could use his own procedure, he could determine whether he would restart the entire count or continue from where he left off. And that’s a problem we have. People have short memories, or they play like they forget. And Mr. Mingo went back, and he did because the court gave him the discretion to determine how he will continue the ascertainment of the votes. And then they (the PPP) went with a contempt motion as to suggest that he was breaching the order… It eventuated into a situation wherein the contempt motion was not heard, and Mr. Mingo completed his ascertainment of the votes, in accordance with section 84 of the Representation of the People’s Act and he made his declaration.

And that declaration was submitted to the Chief Elections Officer, and he has it. So that second declaration of RO was never challenged. That second declaration was never challenged, never set aside by any court. So it is valid and subsisting, all ten are valid and subsisting. And under our law, the only way they could be rendered nugatory is by the decision of an elections petition. So it comes to the question, what is the status, purpose of the national recount and how does that eventuate… Only an election petition can say that the declarations are not legitimate,” Williams said.

GECOM TO DECIDE
As such, he opined that after the recount process, “We will be at a stage where the Chief Elections Officer has to take the 10 declarations to a duly constituted meeting of GECOM, and GECOM at that stage, will be armed with the national recount and the declarations and they will make their decision in accordance with the next steps of the system that is there to complete the elections.”

He made clear that GECOM has to work within the framework of the electoral laws of Guyana. Therefore, the powers the commission has Under Section 22 of those laws allow them to solve prospective problems that would occur but cannot erase or act retrospectively to reverse concluded decisions made during the process of the elections.
“The recount process is not taking place under the Representation of the People’s Act. It is being conducted due to an agreement with the President, Opposition and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), AG Williams reminded.

The opposition, he said, recognises that the results previously announced are legitimate, hence their efforts to discredit them. He, however, pointed out that only an election petition can discredit those declarations.

“The law remains the law, so, at the end of the day, the law will determine what happens.  As I said, the electoral laws state that 10 legitimate declarations have been made, they have been laid over to the CEO [Chief Elections Officer]. The national recount falls under a constitutional provision and the purpose that it is serving is to examine what happened on that day.” AG Williams noted that notwithstanding the anomalies that are uncovered or which party it affects, the recount only impacts the issue of credibility of the elections. “And thus far, the recount has shown an attempt by the opposition to gerrymander the elections.”