AFTER a three-year delay, the trial into the long-awaited electoral fraud case involving former District Four (Demerara-Mahaica) Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo; former People’s National Congress/Reform (PNC/R) Chairperson Volda Lawrence; PNC/R activist Carol Smith-Joseph and four others, is set to commence on March 4.

On Monday, during a case management conference (CMC), additional statements were handed over to the court. Subsequently, Magistrate Leron Daly set timelines for the trial.
The trial will commence from March 4-8. Additionally, the first weeks of April and May have been set aside for the case to be heard.

Special Prosecutor Darshan Ramdhani, KC, will lead the evidence in the case.

The trio, along with Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) employees Sheffern February, Enrique Livan, Denise Bobb-Cummings and Michelle Miller, are before the court for allegedly defrauding the electors of Guyana by declaring a false account of votes for the 2020 General and Regional Elections.

At the last court hearing in December, the state handed over, again, flash drives containing certified copies of Statements of Polls (SoPs) and Statements of Recount (SoRs), along with video interviews. Several bundles of documents were also submitted.

It is alleged that the defendants inflated or facilitated the inflation of results for Region Four, the country’s largest voting district, to give the APNU+AFC coalition a majority win at the polls when, in fact, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) had won by 15,000 votes.

Those who rejected the results filed several legal challenges which ended up before the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Guyana’s highest appeal court.

A lengthy recount of the votes eventually declared victory in favour of the PPP/C, and Dr. Irfaan Ali was sworn in as the President of Guyana on August 2, 2020.