–COI hears

ALMOST every new witness to take the stand at the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the March 2020 General and Regional Elections, has placed the spotlight on varying tactics to highjack those elections.

The COI was informed already of former GECOM’s Information Technology officer, Enrique Livan’s declaration of being tired after working on only a few Statements of Poll (SOPs); about him switching laptops, presenting a populated spreadsheet and manipulating figures.

When Anishaw Mohammed took the stand on Monday, the Commission heard that Livan had tried to stall the tabulation and verification process for District Four when he claimed that there was a technical issue that he couldn’t fix.

Mohammed recalled that a few minutes after Livan started manning the tabulation process, he said that the system was no longer working. He said that he needed to source someone to fix it, but no one was available and so the process would have had to be put on hold.

Mohammed told the commission that she volunteered to fix the system. She testified that she only needed to adjust and secure a few cables and within minutes, the problem, which Livan painted as major, was resolved.

He then began working again. But his productivity in that regard was short-lived. Livan soon declared that he was tired, armed himself with the laptop he was using and a flash drive then left the room.

Mohammed testified that she waited in the tabulation room for about 15 minutes after Livan left before it was discovered that Livan was in another room “working.”

She related that when she went into the other room, the tired Livan was, “evidently working on the laptop.”

She said he was working on the same laptop with which he left the tabulation room. There were two flash drives in his possession, one of which he had in his possession when he left the tabulation room, and another she hadn’t seen before.

Mohammed recalled that about an hour later, the police arrived. At this point, Livan closed the laptop and placed his head on the desk. The police were told of everything that occurred in the presence of Livan who was then given an opportunity to explain himself.

Mohammed said that Livan told the police that he did not take the laptop from the room.

During that confrontation process, a police officer went into the tabulation room to verify Livan’s claim that he did not remove the laptop. Surely, when the police got there, he saw a laptop which Livan claimed was the one being used by him all along.

But Mohammed said: “The laptop that we found in the room was a Dell laptop. He still had the Acer laptop which was the one that was used earlier. But he told the police that the acer was his personal laptop.”

Mohammed provided photographic evidence of the different laptops and of her rectifying the “problem” with the computer. These photos were admitted into evidence.