The verification process for Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) results has come to halt for the fifth time after midnight on Wednesday after a staff who complaint of feeling tired was caught in separate room allegedly attempting to alter the already verified results.
The staff reportedly left the general verification room and removed a laptop and a flash drive. He was later seen working on the laptop with the flash driver hooked up to the system.
The police were reportedly called in along with the Chief Elections Officer, Keith Lowenfield. This action has prompted the Presidential Candidate of the PPP/C, Dr Irfaan Ali to intervene and met with the CEO and other officials of GECOM to discuss the development.
The stalling of the verification process for Region Four was previously interrupted thus causing concerns by the PPP/C as well as other political parties and international and local observers.
Nevertheless, one of the major incidents which took place at the GECOM Command Centre was the emergence of a mysterious spreadsheet for the results of each polling station in Region 4.
This spreadsheet was being used to verify the results instead of the actual Statements of Polls (SOP) and it showed that APNU/AFC Coalition getting more votes than voters in 17 of 23 areas.
In light of this development, Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo who had a meeting with the GECOM officials explained that the laws say for the tabulation to be verified using the SoPs but there was an attempt to use a spreadsheet, which contained figures that differed from most parties and even the observers.
“They came with a spreadsheet and started to call out boxes in the spreadsheet. In 23 places that they called out, 17 of those they had APNU with at least a hundred votes more than what were on the Statements of Polls. So, everyone objected – the observers, the political parties – every one objected to this. Then (Chief Elections Officer Keith) Lowenfield came down himself and he did a random sample. He took three of them and he found that in each of these three cases, you had at least 100 votes more for APNU that is on the Statement of Polls,” Jagdeo noted.
He told reporters outside the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Operations Centre located at High and Hadfield Streets (in Ashmin’s Building), which also houses the Region Four Command Centre, that they do not know where the spreadsheet/list was generated from.
According to the Opposition Leader, it was first used around 13:00h on Wednesday when the verification process had resumed after Region Four Returning Officer, Clairmont Mingo, had collapsed and was rushed to the GPHC, bring a halt to the process.
Jagdeo suspected that attempts were made to have the RO use the false spreadsheet but he, instead, started the verification process on Tuesday night with the SoP as stipulated in the law.
He went onto disclose that the SoPs for 310 ballot boxes in Georgetown were verified on Tuesday with just about 70 more boxes remaining from Georgetown to verify before moving to the East Bank and East Coast of Demerara. But when the verification process, resumed on Wednesday morning, they started with the East Bank Demerara tabulation without completing Georgetown.
“Suddenly, they came, not with the SoPs, they came with a list and started calling out numbers from this list and every list had discrepancies. So the observers objected and started pointing this out and the PPP and the other parties…,” the Opposition Leader noted.
Asked whether efforts were taken to ascertain where the document generated from, Jagdeo posited that this will be looked into later, as the focus now is getting verified results.
“The people of this country are waiting for verified results. They’ve had declaration in all the regions using that very process – Statements of Polls. Here in Region Four, they want to use a list generated by someone so now we have to ensure that the law is followed. The APNU agents seems to be the only ones with the list that the GECOM is using, nobody else has it, no observers. So we have to get back to the process of verifying all the statements of poll in Region 4 to see that they’re accurate and then have the results declare for Region Four,” he contended
However, a decision was taken to start the process all over again but this time using the SOPs but at about 21:00h on Wednesday, the Chief Elections Officer, informed the parties and GECOM that he was tired and abruptly halted the verification process.
But stakeholders, including many of the various parties’ representatives, objected to suspension of the verification process resulting in the CEO making arrangements for at least two Deputy ROs to go in to continue the verification until the discovery of the staff allegedly tampering with results.
