Statement by Chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) The Honourable Mia Amor Mottley,
Prime Minister of Barbados
on the Withdrawal of CARICOM High Level Team
The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) deeply regrets that it has been forced to withdraw the independent High-Level Team it fielded on Saturday, 14 March 2020, to supervise the re-counting of the ballots in Region 4 of the General and Regional Elections of 2 March 2020 in Guyana.
The fielding of the Team had been at the request of His Excellency David Granger, President of Guyana, on Saturday 14 March 2020. In response, and given the urgency of the task, the Team was mobilised immediately and arrived in Guyana in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Given that the tabulation process had been widely viewed as not being transparent or credible, President Granger and Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo, Leader of the Opposition, agreed that the only possible resolution was by way of a recount supervised by an independent team. This was seen as a significant contribution to bolstering the transparency and legitimacy of the electoral process.
This step forward had been anchored by an Aide Memoire signed by both leaders on 16 March 2020, and the Terms of Reference prepared by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to govern the role of the High-Level Team on Sunday, 15 March 2020, for the supervision of the recounting of the ballots, not only in Region 4, but in all 10 electoral districts.
A court order issued on 17 March 2020, granted an injunction restraining GECOM from recounting any ballots of the General and Regional Elections of 2 March 2020, and set aside “any agreement between the President of Guyana and the Leader of the Opposition and or any agreement between the Guyana Elections Commission and the Caribbean Community”.
The Caribbean Community has no other choice but to withdraw the High-Level Team.
It is clear that there are forces that do not want to see the votes recounted for whatever reason. Any Government which is sworn in without a credible and fully transparent vote count process would lack legitimacy.
I would like to thank the High-Level Team for offering to serve at such short notice and for displaying the patience they have displayed over the last three days. The Team was led by Ms Francine Baron, former Attorney-General and Foreign Minister of Dominica, and included Mr Anthony Boatswain, former Minister of Finance of Grenada and Ms Cynthia Barrow-Giles, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government at the University of the West Indies. They were accompanied by Ms Angela Taylor and Ms Fern Narcis-Scope, the Chief Elections Officers of Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago.
As I said in an earlier statement it is critical that good sense prevail. The preservation of law and order is paramount and all parties must work hard to ensure that there is peace on the roads and in the communities across Guyana.
The Community remains committed to the people of Guyana.
