Dear Editor,

I HOPE this letter finds you well and also take this time to wish you and all our Guyanese brothers and sisters, home and abroad, safety, love and a Happy 182nd Emancipation Day. In relation to the events of General and Regional Elections 2020 and all that has happened since that fateful day to this present one when the will of the people of Guyana is not yet “officially” clear, officially being the operative term. I have no degrees, doctorates nor diplomas but I have some CSEC subjects and a few CAPE ones and of course, my fair share of common sense. It is against this backdrop, in pursuit of a proper understanding of our current state of affairs, that I consider the following:

1. Paragraph 3. of the introduction of the National Recount Order 2020 which states, “AND WHEREAS, the President and the Leader of the Opposition and all contesting parties agreed to a CARICOM proposal for a total recount of all Electoral Districts as a means of assuaging the contesting parties and determining a final credible count;”
2. Paragraph 8. of the introduction of the Recount Order 2020 which states, “AND WHEREAS, GECOM, in exercise of the authority vested in it by Article 162 of Our Constitution pursuant to Section 22. of the Elections Laws (Amendment) No. 15 of 2000, seeks to remove difficulties connected with the application of ROPA Cap. 1:03, in implementing its decisions relating to the conduct of the aforementioned recount of all ballots cast at the said election, including the reconciliation of the ballots issued with the ballots cast, destroyed, spoiled, stamped and as deemed necessary, their counterfoils/stubs, authenticity of the ballots and the number of voters listed and crossed out as having voted; the number of voters cast without ID;the number of proxies listed and the number utilized; statistical anomalies; occurrences recorded in the Poll Book.
3. Paragraph 1. (b) of the Recount Order which states the role of the Election Commission includes but is not limited to being the final arbiter of issues not resolved at the lower levels of the established procedure; (f) to determine and declare the final results of GRE 2020.
4. Paragraph 11 of the Recount Order which states that the signed matrix produced in accordance with the aforementioned at Paragraph 9 shall then be transmitted to the CEO and copies given to the political parties that contested the Elections, the CARICOM Scrutinising Team, the Chairman and Commissioners and available to the public,
5. Paragraph 12. of the Recount Order which states, “the matrices for the recount of the ten (10) Electoral Districts shall then be tabulated by the CEO and shall be submitted in a report, together with a summary of the observation report for each district, to the Commission”,
Paragraph 14. Which, states, “the Commission shall, after deliberating on the report at Paragraph 11, determine whether it should request the CEO to use the data compiled in accordance with Paragraph 11, as the basis for the submission of the report under section 96. of ROPA Cap. 1:03”,
And finally, the aforementioned section 96. (1) of ROPA Cap. 1:03 which states “the CEO shall, after calculating the total number of valid votes of electors which have been cast for each list of candidates on the basis of the votes counted and the information furnished by the RO’s under section 84. (11), ascertain the election results in accordance with section 97 and 98”.
While the other aspects of both of the source documents are as equally important as the highlighted ones, these indicate to me, the simplicity of this, on so many levels, impactful situation. I call upon all the individuals involved in this process, especially the end which is a beginning also, to think not only of themselves but of our children and our children’s children. Apart from the material benefits generally entitled to all citizens of Guyana which all this fuss has been tied to in many instances, the spiritual and moral gains of our people which controls our general handling of the material realm happens to be involved likewise. I pray that our leaders and those aspiring to become leaders to humbly widen their circumferences of awareness as opposed to being small minded at the detriment of those who faithfully incorporate your leadership into their existence and forget not that the easiest way to defeat a group is from the inside. Let us be instruments of our own destruction no longer. The Almighty, regardless of our perception of Him/Her, never sleeps. God Bless Guyana. God Bless the Human Race.

Regards,
A junior staff member of the Guyana Elections Commission