—President says opposition applied sly tactics to alter elections outcome
—that bloated OLE was backbone for electoral wrongdoings

WITH the report of Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield indicating that the elections were riddled with illegalities and anomalies, President David Granger said that his party has taken note of the “flaking off” strategy applied by the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), the primary beneficiary of said wrongdoings.

“I’m aware that the technique that was employed by the Opposition has been what is called ‘flaking off’. They don’t try to have grand larceny; when you calculate 2,339 [ballot boxes], they just want to flake off 15 there, flake off 20 here, flake off 50 there,” President Granger told journalists on Sunday during an interview at State House.

“They expect that somebody will ignore a 15 here, but when you multiply it by 2,339 [ballot boxes], it’s more than flaking off; it is a practice which does tremendous damage to the integrity of the poll, and that is why some people are happy with a bloated List,” he said.

The CEO’s report was submitted to the Elections Commission on Saturday, and in each of the summary Observation Reports, it was stated that that due to the anomalies and instances of voter impersonation, the March 2, 2020 Elections did not satisfy the criteria of impartiality, fairness and compliance with the Constitution and the Representation of the People Act.

The Elections Commission is now expected to deliberate on this initial report, to decide whether the CEO should submit a final report for a declaration, based on the information received.

The President said that while the irregularities and anomalies highlighted during the recount process point to an “undercurrent of illegality”, the autonomy of the Commission, in his opinion, has not been impacted.

‘THE REAL DANGER’
What he believes is “the “real danger” are those who attempted to manipulate the elections outcome.

“It is not the Elections Commission; it is the people who went about attempting to engage in multiple voting; the people who went about collecting ID Cards and pretending to be who they were not, and the people who contributed to bloating results at certain polling stations. Those are the dangerous people, not the Elections Commission,” he said.

With the 2020 General and Regional Elections being conducted on a bloated Official List of Electors (OLE), the President reminded media operatives that his party, the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC), had lobbied for a credible List while the Opposition did the opposite. He said that those who were supporting an unrevised List were likewise supporting avenues for the very illegalities which have now been uncovered.

“Once you see a Voters’ List of 661,000 out of a population of 750,000, something has got to be wrong. When you take out 250,000 schoolchildren, the List is bound to contain anomalies; it is bound to exceed the possible voting population; the possible electorate. So, it was quite likely that there were names on that List which might have been used improperly, and this is what the whole recount process was meant to determine,” he said.

On August 31, 2019, the national house-to-house registration exercise came to a halt, a decision GECOM Chair Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh had hoped would balance the need for a credible List and the call for early elections.

The data garnered from the registration exercise was merged with the existing National Register of Registrants Database, and in January 2020, GECOM confirmed to the populace that it would be heading into the elections with a list of 661,028 eligible voters, a figure many agreed was statistically impossible.

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE
Prior to its confirmation, Commissioners nominated by the government argued that under no circumstance could Guyana’s population of 750,000-plus persons produce such a large Voters’ List, considering that the school-age population is around 200,000.

There were also issues regarding the presence of the dead and migrated on the List, and while efforts were made through the General Registrar’s Office (GRO) to remove those persons who were deceased at the time, the Court ruled that residency it is not a requirement for voting in Guyana.

Even in accepting the decision, Government-nominated Commissioners had contended that with Guyana’s known history of allegations of rigged elections, and calls for the recounting of votes heading into ‘the Mother of all Elections’, the most credible List should have been sought.

However, the PPP/C opposed the continuation of the house-to-house registration exercise, and made light of calls to remove the dead and migrants.

Fast-forward to post-Elections Day, the CEO’s report has highlighted a number of persons voting through impersonating those dead and migrant. “There has been widespread abuse, and this is what APNU+AFC has complained about publicly over the last 100 days,” the President told journalists at the meeting.

He said that it was not his expectation that the Elections would have resulted in a landslide victory for either of the two main contenders, due to their large followings, however, what was and still is non-negotiable is the conduct of credible elections.

“The validity of any elections has to be based, in part, on credibility, especially when evidence has emerged that the totality of the votes is inconsistent with the likely voting population, and the behaviour of that population. If it is shown, for example, that more ballots are recorded in a polling station than there are [electors] on the List of Electors, it is incredible. It is incredible that you can have 380 votes, when they are only 300 registered voters at that polling station,” he said.

APNU+AFC party agents had pointed to several such cases of irregularities and anomalies throughout the recount process, but the PPP/C argued that every election will produce margins of error, and the ones discovered by the Coalition are minimal.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

Moving forward, while he believes that GECOM conducted its operations within the framework of the law, the Head of State said that there can be many improvements, which should come through electoral and constitutional reform.

He pointed to age-old challenges such as delayed elections results, which could possibly be eliminated through the use of electronic voting. He also recommended the regular cleansing of the National Register of Registrants Database (NRRDB) to cater for the possibility of snap elections.

“Quite frankly,” he said, “the process is very cumbersome; it calls for training of staff, the allocation of polling places — that was subject to some dispute [regarding] the use of private residences. But we need to put the entire election machinery on a different footing but that can only come after election reform and also constitutional reform.”