No one has the authority to remove votes as defined by law, it is time to redeem yourself (An Open Letter to Keith Lowenfield, Chief Election Officer, GECOM)
I write you as a fellow Guyanese directly and publicly in the interest of our nation, in the name of justice and democracy for all of our people.
The March 2, 2020 General and Regional Election Day demonstrated and fortified our belief that all the strenuous and dedicated efforts by many across the political divide over many years to bring in a legal architecture that enshrined the will of the Guyanese people to vote at free, fair and transparent elections, under the management of a constitutional body, the Guyana Elections Commission, had been proven unshakeable.
Each of the international election observer missions – the Commonwealth, the Organization of American States (OAS), the European Union, CARICOM and the Carter Center –included in their reports that election day and the counting of the votes at each polling station the same night were free and fair, but the process of the tabulation of the results of one Electoral District, District 4, was not credible and must not be used to swear in a new government.
The CARICOM Scrutinizing Team’s report on June 15, 2020, concluded that the “Team was of the unshakeable belief that the people of Guyana expressed their will at the ballot box on March 2 and that the results of the recount certified as valid by the staff of GECOM led to an orderly conclusion on which the declaration of the results of the Election would be made.”
But tell me how is it in the 2015 elections as Chief Election Officer, during your announcement of the results, you said you had some concerns with some counterfeit statements of polls from districts across the country; some of the statements that were delivered to GECOM were not on the same quality of paper on which the original statements were printed and the ones that the Commission approved and a few statements of poll were void of specific security features that characterize GECOM’s official paper.
