By Naomi Parris

PRESIDENTIAL Candidate of A New and United Guyana (ANUG) Ralph Ramkarran has said that whatever the results of the General and Regional Elections when declared by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), it will be final.

Ramkarran, a former Speaker of the National Assembly, made the pronouncement on the ongoing National Recount on Sunday after exiting a meeting with Chair of the Elections Commission, Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC), where the recount is being held.

“The Elections Law (Amendment) Act fully allows [for] a recount, so there is no question about the legality of the recount. And we expect that at the end of the process, a declaration will be issued by GECOM on the results of the recount; and that declaration will be, we hope, the declaration of the final results of the election and will be accepted by all the contestants,” Ramkarran told reporters.

However, due to the allegations of electoral fraud, Ramkarran believes that the country may be headed for what he describes as a “constitutional dead-end”.

“The allegation is that these elections are deeply flawed because of dead and migrated people having voted; if GECOM were to take the position that under the recount process, that these allegations have made it untenable for a declaration to be issued, then that declaration will be equally untenable… So, if you can’t make a declaration under the recount; you can’t make a declaration under the count, that means no declaration can be made,” the ANUG Presidential Candidate reasoned.

Noting that Guyana’s Constitution does not provide for such an occurrence, he said he believes the country may be approaching a constitutional dead-end, since it is imperative that GECOM makes a declaration.

ADDITIONAL WORKSTATIONS
While not wanting to reveal the details of his meeting with the GECOM Chair, Ramkarran disclosed that the need for at least two more stations was among issues discussed.
With 12 workstations in operation at the moment at the Conference Centre, the Elections Commission is now looking to make them 14 in all, but is awaiting clearance from the National COVID-19 Task Force (NCTF).

Contending that the recount process has been a long and tedious one, Ramkarran expressed the view that two more workstations will accelerate the pace at which the ballots are being recounted.
To date, more than 1000 ballot boxes have been processed from a total of 2,339.