...injunction filed against recount
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - THE officials from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) who were in Guyana to oversee the recounting process for its contentious General and Regional Elections have been withdrawn from that country.
CARICOM Officials said it has been forced to withdraw the independent High Level Team it fielded on Saturday, 14 March 2020, to supervise the recounting of the ballots in Region 4 of the General and Regional Elections of 2 March 2020 in Guyana.
SKNVibes understands that an injunction has been placed on the recount, forcing officials to stop the process which was set to begin last evening (Mar. 17).
CARICOM reminded that the fielding of the Team was at the request of His Excellency David Granger, President of Guyana at a meeting held on March 14.
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.
“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 ‘ 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’.”
“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,” CARICOM said in a statement.
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.
The elections have seen courts battles over the results of the largest voting region which is Region 4.
Based on early results, the incumbent coalition won that region giving them the win for the elections.
