CARICOM team to scrutinise vote recount named

The CARICOM high-level team which will act as the chief scrutineers of the recount process has been named and includes only one member from the original team which initially came.

Those scheduled to arrive in Guyana Friday are: Cynthia Barrow-Giles, Senior Lecturer at UWI; Mr. John Jarvis, Commissioner, Antigua and Barbuda Electoral Commission; and Sylvester King, Supervisor of the Electoral Commission of St. Vincent, Public Relations Officer of GECOM Yolanda Ward told the media Thursday night.

She could not say if the CARICOM team will consist of these three or whether more persons are expected to arrive.

“The information received is what I communicated. There were no further details,” Ward said when asked by the News Room.

The previous team, which consisted of five persons and included Barrow-Giles packed up and left after a candidate on the APNU+AFC list of candidates, headed by President David Granger, went to court and challenged the recount.

That court challenge arose out of the use of the words “supervise” to describe the function of the high-level team.

The Court of Appeal ruled that the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) could not hand over its supervisory role to anyone, and so the objectives of the CARICOM team had to be revised.

Commissioners on both sides of the Commission – split evenly along party lines – had said they expect the recount would commence a day or two after the CARICOM team arrives.

The GECOM Commissioners did not express any reservations about the work the GECOM Secretariat, headed by Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield, was doing to prepare for the recount at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre.

With the arrival of the team, the legal order to trigger the recount can now be gazetted and published.

There are 2, 339 ballot boxes which must be counted from all ten Electoral Districts.

General and regional elections were held on March 02. The recount is expected to lead to the final declaration of the results and a winner which will form the new government.