Spokesperson clarifies GECOM did receive complaints against Mingo’s process

Yolanda Ward, the spokesperson for the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), has now clarified that GECOM indeed did receive formal complaints against the process used by District Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo.

Speaking to reporters Sunday night at about 19:00 hrs, Ward corrected a position she had taken earlier that there were no formal complaints for the Commission to consider that the declaration of the vote tabulation for the country’s largest electoral district was fraudulent.

Despite a High Court ruling which clearly established that Mingo breached the country’s electoral laws, Ward had told reporters that no formal report by anyone of their objections to the process he used.

PPP Agent Anil Nandlall called her statement fallacious and said he did write the chair of the Commission, outlying the ways in which Mingo breached the law and did not follow the clear ruling of the Court.

Ward later confirmed that indeed Nandlall did write to the Chair of the Commission and she said too that since the Commission was a party in the proceedings in the court, then the complaints raised in those proceedings could be considered.

Chief Justice Roxane George on March 11 ruled that Mingo had breached the country’s electoral laws when he failed to display and use the numbers from the Statements of Poll from each polling station when doing a tabulation to determine the amount of votes cast for each party. He made made an initial declaration on March 6.

The District had 879 Polling Stations and therefore had the corresponding amount of Statements of Poll, but Mingo only followed the law in tabulating 421 of them.

He then produced a spreadsheet with numbers he purportedly generated from the Statements of Poll but no one believed him – party agents nor observers. The EU observers had written Mingo, asking to see the Statements from which he generated his numbers but he did not respond.

After the High Court ruling, Nandlall, in his letter to the Chair on March 13, complained that he returned to the place where the tabulation was occurring to discover that Mingo had projected on a screen, not the Statements of Poll, but a spreadsheet with numbers he purportedly generated from the Statements.

After the objection, Mingo moved the process to the GECOM headquarters and then decided to use the Statements of Poll and display them. But by then, leaving out the 421 for which Statements of Poll were used, the tabulation for most of the other polling stations were completed using the spreadsheet. So, what remained to be tabulated were just about 80 Statements of Poll.

In his letter, Nandlall said Mingo sought to comply with the Court ruling to display the remaining Statements of Poll, but it was inadequate.

“…only what appears to be an excerpt of a document purporting to be a Statement of Poll appeared on the screen,” Nandlall stated.

He added: “…in any event, the entire process was carried out at such speed that made it impossible for anyone to competently observe.”

The Chief Justice had set aside Mingo’s first declaration and his second declaration, made on the night of March 13, were also dismissed by parties and observers as lacking credibility.