TH 2020 election rigging trial, which has been unfolding like a slow-dripping faucet, is back in court over the next three days. While public interest may have waned, a return to the infamous Ashmin’s building this week, the alleged scene of an attempted mugging of thousands of votes cast for the PPP/C, might just help refocus national attention on what was a brazen assault on our democracy.

I say ‘alleged’ out of respect for our legal process, but if the conclusions of the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) have any weight, and they should, the men and women who conspired to steal the elections must be held accountable for their actions.  Some may argue that since the events occurred a whole five years ago, it is time to move on. Time does heal all wounds, but if there are certain things that time should never forgive, this ought to top the list.

In just over a month from now, Guyanese will head to the polls to cast their votes and elect a government of their choice. It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? It feels much like we are enfranchised, organised, and even civilised, from the Latin root “civilis,” which relates to being a citizen, not barbarians at the gates of refined and cultured society.

And yet in 2020, a cabal of political operatives aligned with the PNC, APNU and AFC set out to hijack the results of the elections to give the losers a victory. You can pour an entire bottle of perfume on that little fact, and it will still stink long after you’ve taken a swim in the salty Atlantic.

Since serious charges of conspiracy to defraud, misconduct in public office, forging and falsifying Statement of Polls (SoPs), in other words, official government documents, were laid against nine individuals, three are former high-ranking GECOM officials, no one has shown an iota of remorse. You’ve got to admire the tenacity, the sheer commitment of Keith Lowenfield, Roxanne Myers, Clairmont Mingo, Volda Lawrence, the former government minister and PNC/R Chair. And then there is the PNC/R activist Carol Smith-Joseph and four former GECOM employees – Sheffern Febrary, Enrique Livan, Denise Babb-Cummings and Michelle Miller. After sitting in court and hearing witness after witness testify, there is no sign that any of them are about to break ranks and enter a guilty plea and submit to whatever punishment Magistrate Faith McGusty might hand down. It is not likely to happen either.

And if you’re surprised, look at who their lawyers are, mostly men who harbour political aspirations. Men who would want the court and the public to believe that it was the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) who trumped up these charges in the first place to disparage the PNCR-led APNU and the isolated and diminished Alliance For Change party led by Nigel Hughes, the attorney who is leading the defence strategy.

Hughes has been coaching Eusi Anderson to harangue the State’s witnesses with as much invective and bombast as he could muster on any given day to disparage and discredit the eyewitnesses as lackeys of the PPP/C.

Dr. Dexter Todd – his pseudo-intellectual demeanour may fool many – but he plays his part in court, and now Aubrey Norton is dangling a ministerial position in his face. And so, we circle back this week to Ashmin’s building. The purpose is not to admire its architecture, but rather to give Magistrate McGusty a vivid picture of the restrictive atmosphere in the room as the accused before her conspired to limit oversight and undermine transparency during the tense tabulation process.

Where were the observers, party agents and diplomats situated when Myers shouted at them, “Take your rubbish with you and leave, y’all get out the room, there is a bomb in the building.” Evidence presented in court shows that DCEO Myers knew it was a hoax since she, herself, never thought it was urgent enough to leave the building.

And how about the testimony of Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) and Region Four Commander, Edgar Thomas, who arrived at Ashmin’s to investigate the bomb threat? ACP Thomas refused to follow orders to vacate the premises. That refusal cost him his job. On orders likely from former President David Granger, a solid high-ranking police officer was terminated.

ACP Thomas testified at the CoI that he discovered GECOM staffer Enrique Livan in a private room with a laptop computer and a flash drive, manipulating figures at the height of the vote count. While this was happening, he testified, Lowenflied was tabulating Region Four votes using his own fabricated numbers displayed on a spreadsheet.

One would think this could all be sorted if Magistrate McGusty were to screen surveillance footage from CCTV cameras in the building. Wrong. Chief Elections Officer Vishnu Persaud testified at the CoI that “no video surveillance of the tabulation process within Ashmin’s Building has been located…nobody seems to know when the cameras were removed and where the footage might be.”

What happened inside Ashmin’s building in 2020 was not electoral mischief; it was political arrogance. Guyana today cannot treat this as some kind of administrative hiccup. Those who tried to defraud an entire nation must be held accountable. Otherwise, we risk sending a message that Guyana’s electoral process is fair game for subversion. That must not happen, not now, not ever again. And the time to deliver that message is on September 1, 2025.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.