Senior Magistrate Leron Daly has made it clear on Wednesday that unless the prosecutor organises statements that are in disarray, she would not begin the trials into the two dozen electoral fraud charges.
The lead prosecutor, Darshan Ramdhani, KC, has been granted until December 12 to organise his affairs, while defence attorney Nigel Hughes has threatened to file a constitutional action over what he believes is a breach of Article 144 (1) of the Constitution.
Article 144 (1) of the Constitution of Guyana stipulates that each accused person must be given a fair hearing within a reasonable amount of time by a fair and independent court.
The accused persons are former District Four (Demerara-Mahaica) Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo; former People’s National Congress/Reform (PNCR) Chairperson Volda Lawrence; PNCR activist Carol Smith-Joseph; former Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield; former Deputy Chief Elections Officer Roxanne Myers; and Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) employees Sheffern February, Enrique Livan, Denise Babb-Cummings and Michelle Miller.
They are accused of a number of offences, including 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. These accused persons are all out on cash bail.
When the cases were brought before Magistrate Daly on Wednesday for reporting, Ramdhani told her that he was still awaiting a response to his letter to Chancellor of the Judiciary (ag) Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards, requesting that she assign a “dedicated court” to hear these electoral fraud cases.
He contended that this would ensure the matters are tried expeditiously. Magistrate Daly is handling 24 of the 30-plus charges.
The letter was sent to the head of the Judiciary on October 5, and the King’s Counsel claims that he has not received a response three weeks later. According to him, he spoke with the Chancellor’s assistant on Wednesday and was informed that his “letter is on her [the Chancellor’s] desk.”
He therefore asked for one more adjournment.
The sitting magistrate then instructed Ramdhani to “sort out” the statements according to the offences, in her speech implying the laborious work of her having to go through a box full of statements.
“I would like to have some form of order before I start [the trial]. This is something I am not willing to compromise on. I will not commence if those statements are not properly organised,” Magistrate Daly remarked as she gave the prosecution until December 12 to comply.
Responding, the primary prosecutor conceded that it is “quite a lot of evidence”, and committed to providing the court with the “greatest of assistance”.
Regarding the prosecutor’s letter addressed to the Chancellor, Hughes argued that the Chancellor is not authorized to interfere with a criminal charge proceeding before a magistrate.
Ramdhani, however, reasoned that Section 9 of the Summary Jurisdiction (Magistrates) Act allows the Chancellor to act in this way. Since the underlying evidence for each of these instances comes from the same source, Ramdhani had requested that the cases be consolidated during an earlier court hearing on October 3.
This was in reaction to Hughes’s assessment that the proceedings would go on for a number of years because of the volume of evidence and the number of accused parties. Hughes had suggested that the prosecution drop some charges to expedite the process, but the special prosecutor had strongly objected. The prosecution plans to call about 80 witnesses.
Concerns regarding the unsatisfactory progress in these cases have been voiced by a number of persons, including Attorney General Anil Nandlall, SC.
Shortly after GECOM had announced the election results on August 2, 2020, charges were brought against the individuals in question. The trials have not started after more than three years.
The election report of former CEO Keith Lowenfield claimed that the APNU/AFC coalition garnered 171,825 votes, while the 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.
The recount exercise also highlighted that Mingo had heavily inflated the figures in Region Four — Guyana’s largest voting District — in favour of the then caretaker APNU/AFC regime.
In August 2021, GECOM voted to terminate the employment of Keith Lowenfield, Roxanne Myers, and Clairmont Mingo.
