CHIEF Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield, his deputy Roxanne Myers and Region Four Returning Officer (RO), Clairmont Mingo, along with other Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) employees who participated in the attempts to “steal” the 2020 General and Regional Elections for the Coalition will be removed in due course.

This is according to PPP/C-nominated GECOM Commissioner Sase Gunraj, who appeared on a special programme aired on the National Communications Network (NCN) titled, “Assault on Democracy.”

“I want to say to the nation now that in short order steps are going to be taken to remove them from GECOM. I say that with no apologies. I say that because their actions were clearly designed to steal the election, to thwart the will of the electorate and there must be consequences for that, because their presence there undermines the confidence in the system,” Gunraj explained.
He said if those who are charged with the responsibility to carry out a process, “the guardians of the process,” are abusing the process, “then something is obviously not right and that must be fixed, it’s plain and simple.”

Parliamentary Affairs and Governance Minister, Gail Teixeira, who also appeared on the programme, said “unless there is the removal of the persons who are guilty, or persons who are trying openly and brazenly, barefacedly to steal the rights of the people, the trust and confidence is [sic] not going to be at the level that we want it for local government elections and for [the] next general elections in five years’ time.”

She continued: “And these are critical steps we have in this period to make sure that people have confidence. This is a constitutional body that in fact was the instrument used, not the soldiers stealing ballot boxes in the past. This was where the constitutional body itself, GECOM, was the instrument to steal the elections, and that must never happen again.”
Teixeira noted, that she is confident Guyana now has a golden opportunity to build on this experience and that Guyana must teach its young people to continue to defend their democratic rights for development of the nation.

DEALT WITH CONDIGNLY
On a similar programme, Attorney-General and Legal Affairs Minister Mohabir Anil Nandlall, said all legal and administrative screws that are loose will be tightened to ensure that attempts at electoral fraud are dealt with condignly.

Noting that electoral reform will manifest itself in two forms, the Attorney-General said that while one will be the constitutional reforms that require a two-thirds majority, “the riggers will not support reforms to make the process transparent, because they are hoping for another opportunity to thief the elections.”

He said that 90 per cent of the electoral reforms can be done by a simple majority, and in giving an example, he said all Statements of Poll (SoPs) made public will be uploaded to a website for all Guyanese to view.

“All the weaknesses in the law that they exploited are still fresh in our minds, so we have a tabulation of them. I have already begun the exercise, and a unit has been established. And we are working towards correcting them, and, hopefully, we will correct them before Local Government Elections,” the Attorney-General said.
He noted that all the necessary amendments to the laws will be made before the next general elections.

Further, he said that systematically, everything will be checked in detail, and all the loose screws will be tightened.
Emphasising that March 2, 2020, and its aftermath were defining moments in the country’s history, Nandlall said, “We as a people did not succumb to those who wanted to destroy this country, using race, using violence, using fraud, sabotaging the electoral process and employing various methods.”

He said all right-thinking Guyanese, CARICOM and the international community stood “on the side of freedom and democracy and in the end we prevailed.”
Meanwhile, Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield; his deputy, Roxanne Myers and Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo are before the courts on charges of misconduct in public office.

Lowenfield has six charges against him filed by the police following a “comprehensive” investigation into the elections and their aftermath.
The charges include three counts of misconduct in public office and three counts of forgery.

Additionally, Chairperson of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR), Volda Lawrence; PNC activist, Carol Joseph and GECOM Returning Officer for Region Four, Clairmont Mingo are all accused of inflating the results of Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), the country’s largest voting district, to give the APNU+AFC Coalition a majority win at the March 2 polls, when in fact, the PPP/C had won by 15,000 votes.