Private criminal charges filed against Chief Elections Officer

People’s Progressive Party (PPP) member Desmond Morian and Member of The New Movement, Daniel Josh Kanhai have filed private criminal charges against Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield.

According to court documents seen by the NewsRoom, Lowenfield is accused of misconduct in office and breach of the public’s trust by providing results of the March 2 elections which he knows to be false.

“The Accused between 5th March, 2020 and 29th June, 2020 while performing his duty as the Chief Elections Officer of the Guyana Elections Commission, without lawful excuse or justification, willfully misconducted himself at Georgetown…a place within the Georgetown Magisterial District by ascertaining results of the 2nd March, 2020, General and Regional Elections for Guyana knowing the said results to be false, the said willfull misconduct amounting to a breach of the public’s trust in the Office of the Chief Elections Officer of the Guyana Elections Commission,” the court document stated.

Kanhai told the News Room that the hearing is set for 09:00h on Friday at the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court.

Lowenfield has faced harsh criticisms from organisations and civil society in Guyana and abroad for disobeying clear instructions given to him by Chairperson of the GECOM, Justice (ret’d) Claudette Singh to present a report to the Commission using the certified and valid figures from the national recount to declare the winner of the March 2 polls.

Lowenfield instead presented a report in which he dumped over 115,000 votes to give the incumbent APNU+AFC a victory.

The numbers presented in the report is in contradiction to a report he presented at the end of the national vote recount which gives the PPP/C a victory of 15,416 more votes.

Lowenfield is also under scrutiny for preparing a report on March 5 which shows a victory for the Coalition based on fraudulent and inflated figures provided by Clairmont Mingo, the Returning Officer for Guyana’s largest voting district- Region 4.

The national recount proved that Mingo inflated votes in favour of the Coalition.

The Coalition has endorsed both these reports submitted by Lowenfield.