The Guyana Police Force (GPF) is expected to institute additional charges against embattled Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield, for his controversial role in the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections.
INews understands that Lowenfield will be slapped with at least two additional charges of conspiracy to defraud. This will be added to the plethora of other charges Lowenfield already faces for his role in attempts to sway the results of the elections in favor of the then ruling A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) Government.
Lowenfield is currently facing three counts of forgery and three counts of misconduct in public office. He is currently out on $300,000 bail. His Deputy, Roxanne Myers, has meanwhile been slapped with two counts of misconduct in public office and has been placed on $300,000 bail in relation to both charges.
The duo were charged along with GECOM officials including embattled Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo, who is on $600,000 bail for charges similar to what Myers is facing. It is understood that both Lowenfield and Myers were invited down to police headquarters on Tuesday. Efforts to contact their legal counsel were futile.
People’s National Congress Reform Chairperson Volda Lawrence and APNU/AFC activist Carol Joseph are also before the courts on electoral fraud charges. There are also electoral fraud charges against GECOM clerks Denise Bob-Cummings and Michelle Miller and GECOM Elections Officer Shefern February and Information Technology Officer Enrique Livan. They, too, have been released on bail.
In addition to these charges, motions seeking the dismissal of the three senior GECOM officials were tabled last week by GECOM Commissioners Sase Gunraj, Bibi Shadick and Manoj Narayan – all lawyers – before GECOM Chair, Retired Justice Claudette Singh when they met last.
The motion to dismiss Lowenfield from his substantive post as CEO was tabled by Gunraj and Shadick and listed 20 grounds on which he should be dismissed.
In the case of Myers, that motion was submitted in the names of Shadick and Narayan. They argued that she aided Lowenfield in the Commission of all his infractions and even went out of her way to facilitate a meeting in a GECOM facility by then Foreign Affairs Minister Karen Cummings where she threatened to revoke the accreditation of international observers.
The grounds for Mingo’s dismissal surround his tabulation of the SoPs in which he clearly manufactured numbers to reflect a win by the APNU/AFC. It also concerns his conduct and defiance of the court orders mandating that he follow the outlined statutory process to acquire his final tally of the SoPs.
Justice Singh has since written to both Lowenfield and Myers asking them to provide, in writing, responses to the motion indicating why they should not be dismissed from their substantive posts. They have until June 15 to show why they should not be dismissed.
