Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield on Saturday presented his report of the national vote recount, showing the totals for the ten electoral districts which were signed off by GECOM’s own staff as being valid; when added up, Lowenfield’s report shows the Opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP) winning the elections by 15, 416 votes.
The Constitution at Article 177 dictates that “if more votes are cast in favour of the list in which a person is designated as Presidential candidate that in favour of any other list, that Presidential Candidate shall be ‘deemed’ to be elected President and shall be so declared by the Chairman of the Elections Commission acting only in accordance with the advice of the Chief Elections Officer…”
Now that the Chief Elections Officer has presented his report showing that more votes were cast in favour of the list headed by Irfaan Ali, then he is deemed President and it is only left for the GECOM chair to declare him President.
The Constitution, in this direction, does not make any provisions for the Chief Elections Officer to pronounce on the credibility of the results; his only role, in this case, is to present the results.
For each of the ten certificates of the recount which gives the grand total, the GECOM staff, particularly the District Supervisors, signed off with these words: “I certify that the abovementioned totals were correctly compiled, ascertained and verified using the Statements of Recount….”
While Lowenfield has sought to discredit the entire elections by saying that he “cannot ascertain” that the results meet the criteria of credible elections, he was the one in charge of holding the entire elections and running the recount.
And it is Lowenfield in his report to the Chair of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Saturday who correctly gave the recount totals as certified by the senior recount staff.
And it was the GECOM staff, all under the command of Lowenfield, who certified the results for each electoral district when the recount was concluded.
A total of 2, 339 Statements of Recount were produced during the recount; these showed the total amount of votes cast for each party at each polling station.
The figures of valid votes cast for the parties from those Statements of Recount were then added up to get the totals for every district.
Before the signatures for every district, there was a table showing the results of the recount with the words “VALID VOTES CAST FOR EACH PARTY LIST OF CANDIDATES.”
The combined totals, as presented by Lowenfield on Saturday, shows the PPP winning the elections with 233, 336 votes. APNU+AFC secured 217,920 votes. Together the other parties secured 9,096 votes.
It means therefore that APNU+AFC lost the elections by 24, 512 votes.
