Georgetown: The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) following Wednesday’s decision of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) will meet Thursday at 13:00hrs in the aftermath of the court’s ruling that the Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield must submits a report in accordance with the direction he was given by retired judge Claudette Singh.
“It was inconsistent with the constitutional framework for the CEO or GECOM to disenfranchise tens of thousands of electors in a seemingly non-transparent and arbitrary manner…,” Justice Adrian Saunders, President of the CCJ stated.
Lowenfield was on June 16 told by Justice Singh to prepare an elections report with the tabulation of the national vote recount and calculate the Parliamentary seats assigned to each party. But he failed to do that and relied on a Court of Appeal ruling of June 22 to decide on his own which votes are valid. But the CCJ threw out both the Court of Appeal’s decision and Lowenfield’s.
“It is for GECOM to ensure the CEO submits a report in accordance with its direction of June 16 in order to proceed along the path directed by the laws of Guyana,” Justice Saunders stated.
GECOM has not met since Lowenfield presented his report, which discarded over 115,000 votes and handed victory to the Coalition APNU+AFC instead of the PPP, as the recount clearly showed.
In his ruling, the Court’s President Justice Adrian Saunders alluded to the June 2020 report of the Chief Elections Officer, which he based on the Court of Appeal’s decision and invalidated votes, he determined were invalid.
By the unnecessary insertion of the word “valid”, the Judge said that the Court of Appeal impliedly invited the CEO to engage unilaterally in an unlawful validation exercise.
“This trespassed on the exclusive jurisdiction of the High Court established by Article 163. It was inconsistent with the constitutional framework for the CEO or GECOM to disenfranchise thousands of electors in a seemingly non transparent and arbitrary manner, without the due processes established in Article 163 and the Validation Act,” the Judge stressed.
According to Saunders, the concept of “valid votes” is well known to the legislative framework governing the electoral process. He noted that the phrase appears several times in the Representation of the People Act.
In this context, Justice Saunders said that the Chief Election Officer to calculate “the total number of valid votes of electors which have been cast for each list of candidates.”
He explained that, “the determination of such validity is a transparent exercise that weeds out of the process, for example, spoilt or rejected ballots. This is an exercise conducted in the presence of the duly appointed candidates and counting agents of contesting parties.”
According to Saunders, it is after such invalid votes are weeded out that the remaining “valid” votes count towards a determination of not only the members of the National Assembly but incidentally as well, the various listed Presidential candidates.
He emphasized that, “If the integrity of a ballot, or the manner in which a vote was procured, is questioned beyond this transparent validation exercise, say because of some fundamental irregularity such as those alleged by Mr. Harmon, then that would be a matter that must be pursued through Article 163 after the elections have been concluded.”
Further, the Judge said that unless and until an election court decides otherwise, the votes already counted by the recount process as valid votes are incapable of being declared invalid by any person or authority.
Additionally, the CCJ Judge determined that GECOM Chairperson Justice Claudette Singh was right to state that GECOM lacked the legislative authority and the machinery to embark upon a determination of irregularities outlined in Lowenfield’s report.
The GECOM Chairperson conferred with the Commissioners and announced publicly that some of the allegations set out were serious, but said ultimately that the Commission did not have the machinery to adjudicate them.
“The Chairperson pointed out that the Constitution had vested in the High Court an exclusive jurisdiction to determine the legality of an election and the Commission could not arrogate onto itself the power to annul elections,” Saunders explained.
The CCJ Judge held therefore that Lowenfield’s June 23 report is also invalid and of no effect.
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