Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield, in defending his actions, claims he is a “constitutional officer” – when in fact, this is not true.
Lowenfield, in a press release issued by the Guyana Elections Commission Secretariat, stated: “While the Commission makes certain policy decisions and provides guidance to the Chief Election Officer for implementation by the Secretariat, I have to execute my duties as a Constitutional Officer, particularly in the conduct of Elections.”
However, Lowenfield is a statutory officer.
In fact, this was highlighted by the Peoples Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) in their statement in response to Lowenfield.
The Party pointed out that: “Mr. Lowenfield is not a constitutional officer holder as he claims in his release, since the office of the Chief Election Officer is not created by the Constitution. It is created by the Representation of the People Act. The Chief Election Officer is hired by the Commission. He is therefore a statutory contractual officer of the Commission and his mandate is to only act upon the directions of the Commission.”
Lowenfield has been caught in another attempt to alter the results of the March 2 General and Regional Elections, following his submission of a second report with doctored figures on Tuesday.
In fact, the manufactured figures included in Lowenfield’s latest report do not even correspond with the numbers he had concocted in his first report to the Chairperson.
In the first report, Lowenfield claimed that the APNU/AFC won 125,010 votes while the PPP/C won 56,627 – disfranchising some 60 per cent of the electorate on mere allegations that their votes are “invalid”.
But now, Lowenfield’s new report validates votes he would have previously invalidated; the CEO now claims that the APNU/AFC coalition garnered 171,825 votes while the PPP/C gained 166,343 votes.
How the CEO arrived at those figures is unknown, since the certified results from the legally conducted recount exercise supervised by GECOM and a high-level team from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) pellucidly show that the PPP/C won with 233,336 votes while the APNU/AFC garnered 217,920.
