CARICOM chairman urges Guyana to end election charade
Published:Friday | July 17, 2020 | 12:20 AMPaul Clarke/Gleaner Writer
CARICOM Chairman Dr Ralph Gonsalves has weighed in on the Guyana election stalemate, saying that what should be a straightforward matter of counting votes in a democracy has become the equivalent of a long-running soap opera, pregnant with real danger for the people of Guyana and the Caribbean Community.
He urged the country’s leaders to move beyond the politicking and to get on with the people’s business.
“This charade ought to be brought to an end immediately and a just declaration made by Guyana Elections Commission in keeping with the clear mandate delivered by the voters of Guyana and in accord with the laws of Guyana and the Caribbean Court of Justice’s (CCJ) judgment,” he said.
On July 8, the CCJ delivered its judgement on the saga following the March 2 general and regional elections, the results of which are being contested. The country was locked in a legal and political impasse since an election recount found that the president, David Granger, had lost by 15,416 votes.
After the recount, the chief executive of Guyana’s electoral commission, Keith Lowenfield, disqualified 120,000 votes – nearly a fifth of those cast – handing the contested victory to Granger.
The CCJ later overruled Lowenfield, but now another legal challenge has been declared in an attempt to prevent the commission from declaring Granger’s defeat.
HIJACKING ELECTIONS
Gonsalves charges that a small group of persons, in and outside of Guyana, are seeking to hijack the elections in plain sight.
“Competitive elections deliver, necessarily, winners and losers. When you lose, you take your loss like a grown man or woman, and you move on peaceably to the role which the voters, in their collective wisdom, have assigned you,” he said.
In the aftermath, United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called for Granger to step down as he announced travel bans “against those undermining democracy in the country or complicit in doing so”.
The United Kingdom is being pressured to join the US in imposing sanctions on Granger. Two UK Foreign Office ministers have made calls to Granger, urging him to accept the result.
In addition to the UK and the US, Canada also said it would use all the tools at its disposal to demand a swift and transparent conclusion to the election process.