The 2020 General and Regional Elections fraud case against former Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) staff and other co-accused, began on Monday with Local Government Minister, Sonia Parag testifying that staff from the election agency attempted to subtract votes from the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) and add them to the then ruling coalition party.
During day one of the trial which is being presided over by Senior Magistrate Leron Daly, Parag who was then a candidate on the PPP/C’s list recalled the blatant attempts to steal votes.
She testified that efforts were being made by GECOM staff, before her very eyes, to alter the results by deducting PPP/C votes and adding votes to the then-ruling APNU/AFC.
According to Parag, she raised strenuous objections. Others such as the current Minister within the Office of Prime Minister, Kwame McCoy, subsequently joined in making objections.
She recalled that as she raised her objections, however, persons in the room were also trying to counteract those objections. Parag also named former GECOM official Michelle Miller, one of those on trial, as being the person who read out numbers from what she believed was a spreadsheet.
However, some of her testimony was not admitted by the court, after objections by defense counsels. The presiding magistrate questioned the relevance of some of the evidence being presented.
However, Special Prosecutor Darshan Ramdhani noted that the relevance is in GECOM deliberately ignoring the objections of multiple observers in the room. After consulting with counsel in her chambers, Magistrate Daly adjourned the case for today at 9:30h.
Based on Ramdhani’s opening statement, forensically audited Statements of Poll will be presented to the court during the trial. In an interview with the media afterward, he noted that despite objections from the defense, the Magistrate was allowing the evidence to flow.
“We have finally started this trial. And one witness is in the box, giving evidence. We’ve had a good morning so far. There have been a lot of objections. You’ve seen the objections. I think it’s almost objection after objection. But the evidence is flowing smoothly.”
“You saw the magistrate let us continue with the evidence. So, the objections are no objections, the evidence is coming out. There was an objection, for instance, about the identification of the defendants. And the magistrate made it clear, this case will not turn upon whether these people are the people sitting in that room, calling out numbers.”
Objections
Attorney-at-Law Ronald Daniels of Hughes, Field and Stoby, who is one of the defense lawyers, meanwhile continued his objections outside, to Parag being allowed to give testimony that had not been disclosed to the defense.
“In the latter portion of Ms Parag’s testimony, she was giving evidence that was not disclosed to the defence and of course, we have had quite a protracted period of over which disclosure could have been made. So, we took the objection that the evidence which was given, we did not have the benefit of that to obtain instructions from our clients, so that we can treat with that accordingly.”
“Quite unfortunately, our senior on the prosecution side took the view that the witness should be permitted to, what we would deem as, to venture on a frolic of her own, to give testimony about virtually anything that he perhaps deems relevant, which was not disclosed to the defense,” Daniels said.
The trial is set to last from July 29 to September 13, some four years after the 2020 General and Regional Elections. Other witnesses expected to testify include Head of the Diaspora Unit Rosalinda Rasul, former Region Four Police Commander Edgar Thomas, and Forensic Investigator Rawle Nedd.
Former Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield, his former Deputy Roxanne Myers along with former District Four (Demerara-Mahaica) Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo, former People’s National Congress/Reform (PNCR) Chairperson Volda Lawrence, PNCR activist Carol Smith-Joseph, and GECOM employees Sheffern February, Enrique Livan, Denise Babb-Cummings and Michelle Miller, are facing twenty-eight charges relating to electoral fraud.
Among the offences these defendants are accused of committing are: misconduct while holding public office; presenting falsified documentation; and planning to manipulate Guyana’s voters by presenting an inaccurate vote total.
These charges stemmed from attempts to rig the 2020 General and Regional Elections in favour of the then-ruling APNU/AFC. The election report of former CEO Lowenfield claimed that the APNU/AFC coalition garnered 171,825 votes, while the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) gained 166,343 votes.
How he arrived at those figures is still unknown, since the certified results from the recount exercise supervised by GECOM and a high-level team from the Caribbean Community (Caricom) pellucidly showed that the PPP/C won with 233,336 votes, while the coalition garnered 217,920.
Following the recount PPP’s Irfaan Ali was declared President of Guyana on August 2, 2020 – some five months after the March 2, 2020, General and Regional Elections.
