Dear Editor

I AM a politically neutral observer of Guyanese and Swiss decent residing abroad. In response to the Caribbean Court of Justice decision, I would like to draw attention to an obvious discrepancy, which remains unaddressed even after the CARICOM supervised recount.

According to the unofficial recount numbers [1], 460’295 valid votes were cast in the 2020 elections last March. Given my own assessment, we can expect about 477’910 eligible voters to be living in Guyana. These are adults, 18 years and older, which constitute about 62.3% of the Guyanese population [2]. My calculations are based on an estimated population of 782’766 for 2019 [3]. The foreign population is about 2% [4] or 15’655, which would result in 767’111 Guyanese citizens living in Guyana. 62.3% or 477’910 Guyanese citizens would be of voting age. Hence, with 477’910 eligible voters living in Guyana and 460’295 votes cast in the 2020 general elections, the voter turnout would be 96.3%. This is rather unrealistic for the many reasons and uncommon in liberal democracies.

In fact, the voter turnout for the 2020 elections was reported to be 72.58% [5]. With 477’910 eligible voters, one would expect that 346’867 votes were cast. This would indicate that an excess of 113’428 votes were found in the ballot boxes. Alternatively, if the number of 460’295 votes tabulated in the recount were indeed all valid and genuine, one would have to postulate a resident population of more than 1 million in Guyana. There is however no credible evidence in support of the latter notion.

One could argue that the 113’428 excess votes could be accounted to Guyanese living abroad, who returned to Guyana to participate in the elections. In theory, this would be possible given that several hundred thousand Guyanese are living in the US, Canada, and the UK [6]. However, I doubt it for logistical reasons. One would need 560 plane flights (with 200 passenger on board) to bring these people within a couple of weeks to Guyana prior to the elections. In addition, most of them would have to find temporary accommodation in the Georgetown metropolitan area. In my opinion, Guyanese abroad returning to vote in the 2020 general elections would amount at best for some few thousand extra voters.

In summary, the number of 460’295 votes cast appears to be unrealistically high and there is presently no rational explanation why this should be correct. In my opinion, we can only speak of fair, credible, and transparent elections, if they are conducted on the basis of a validated list of eligible voters living in Guyana on Election Day. This precondition has not been met for the 2020 elections.

I therefore believe that the 2020 general elections have to be annulled and a caretaker government needs to take over to prepare for new elections in 2021 on the basis of an updated and validated voter registry. I am however not sure whether the Guyanese constitution allows for this type of a solution.

Andre Brandli, PhD
Professor of Molecular Pathophysiology
University of Munich, Germany