After Chief Justice, Roxanne George ruled on Wednesday that the declaration of results for Region 4 was unlawful, Returning Officer, Mr. Clairmont Mingo resumed tabulation on Thursday morning.
The Chief Justice further mentioned in her ruling that the Returning Officer is to determine the method of tabulation of the Statements of Poll (SOPs).
On Thursday, Mr. Mingo in his discretion, was reportedly using a spreadsheet rather than the SOP’s. This caused some disturbances which resulted in Chairman of the Guyana Election Commission (GECOM), Justice Claudette Singh suspending the tabulation process until Friday morning, 11 days after elections day. Justice Singh, requested a copy of the ruling by Chief Justice, Roxanne George.
It states: “It would be for the Returning Officer, and or the Deputy Returning Officer to decide whether in the interest of transparency the addition process should be restarted or continued from where it was left off. It would also be for these functionaries to determine the best method of tabulating the Statements of Poll. Again, it cannot be for the persons present to indicate how this should be conducted. So, I want to emphasize, that everybody else who think they can have an input or a say, it is not their statutory duty.”
It is critical to note that out of the other nine electoral regions, it was reported that the spreadsheet process was used in eight.
On Friday, Mr. Mingo resumed tabulation with the use of SOPs. However, members of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) along with other small parties complained that the numbers were not matching the original SOPs used by GECOM. Eventually, The American, British, Canadian and EU Diplomatic Representatives walked out while party members began to loudly refute numbers called by Mr. Mingo.
