Georgetown: The People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) has requested through a lawyers letter for the Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Justice (ret’d) Claudette Singh to instruct Chief Elections Officer, Keith Lowenfield to withdraw the controversial elections report he submitted on June 23 in which he invalidated over 115,000 votes.
The letter from Attorneys Anil Nandlall and Devindra Kissoon is dated June 24 and was part of submissions to the Caribbean Court of Justice in the appeal filed by the PPP/C.
In a lawyer’s letter to the Chairman, the party noted that “We would be grateful if the Chief Elections Officer can be directed to withdraw the report he submitted dated June 23, 2020, and be redirected to act in the accordance with the instructions previously given on the June 16, 2020 “using the results of the recount” as the basis for his report.”
The lawyers noted that the CEO did not comply with the request made by the GECOM Chairman to submit the results from the recount to declare the winner of the March 2020 elections.
The CEO in his initial report following the recount provided the correct results from the recount which showed the opposition PPP won the elections with 233, 336 votes while the APNU+AFC received 217, 920 votes.
They added that while they are mindful of the admonitions of the CCJ which stated on June 23 that GECOM and its agents must take no step to prejudice the fair hearing of the ongoing case “the clear language of the CCJ Order does not prevent compliance with our request,” the letter stated.
The PPP wants the CCJ to throw out a decision by the Guyana Court of Appeal earlier this week that the words “more votes are cast” in Article 177(2)(b) of the Constitution of Guyana be interpreted to mean “more valid votes are cast in relation to the election held on 2nd March 2020”.
Incoming Chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves had publicly urged President Granger to concede defeat based on the recounted votes.
Outgoing CARICOM Chairman, Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley publicly slammed Guyana’s Chief Elections Officer, Keith Lowenfield for invalidating 115,000 votes instead of counting all valid votes cast and recounted. The United States, Britain, Canada, European Union, Organisation of American States, and the Commonwealth have all called for the recount data to be used to declare the final election results.
You must be logged in to post a comment.