With GECOM slated to meet today, PPP/C Candidate Hugh Todd expressed hopes that a decision will be made to discipline Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield for his recent acts of insubordination.
As he put it, both the Chair and GECOM have sweeping powers that can be put to use against the CEO.
“This is a man who’s worked in the military. This is a man who understands instructions, authority, his job. He said so himself. We have clips of him talking about the fact that the CEO takes instructions from the Commission and he’s not a power unto himself,” Todd said during a recent panel discussion.
“What I’m seeing in the environment, the people are tired of him. We’ve been patient, we’ve given him many opportunities to correct himself. The people of Guyana, the electorate, are calling for his removal. And I think madam Chair, along with the Commission, will be taking decisive steps to ensure Keith Lowenfield does not stand in the way of the will of the people.”
The national report had shown that the PPP/C won the elections with 233,336 votes while the APNU/AFC coalition garnered 217,920.
GECOM Chair Justice Claudette Singh had written to Lowenfield and instructed him to prepare a final report based on the recount.
Instead, Lowenfield had submitted a report invalidating over 115,000 voters based on unsubstantiated allegations of dead and migrant voters, made by the APNU/AFC. Lowenfield’s actions caused an immediate uproar and the varying sides found themselves in the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) for the Irfaan Ali et al v Eslyn David et al case.
Among other decisions, the CCJ ruled on that the Chief Elections Officer must produce a final elections report as ordered by the Chair. The CCJ also ruled that Lowenfield’s report which arbitrarily disenfranchised voters was invalid and that the concerns raised by the APNU/AFC coalition must be addressed in an elections petition.
The GECOM Chair wrote Lowenfield again, instructing him to submit his report so that the President could be declared. In his fraudulent report he submitted on Saturday, Lowenfield included the fraudulent declarations of the embattled Mingo, which inaccurately shows that the PPP/C gained 80,920 votes while the APNU/AFC received 116,941 votes in Region Four.
The inaccuracy of those numbers was widely proven during the recount exercise, as it was unearthed that Mingo heavily inflated the votes in favour of the APNU/AFC to give them a false victory.
Lowenfield already has several private criminal charges pending against him in the High Court on the charge of misconduct in public office, for which Principal Magistrate Faith McGusty issued a summons to him after he failed to appear in court.
