Chief Justice’s ruling on APNU+AFC election petitions

Before proceeding with today’s article, we wish to clarify that the views expressed in last week’s article entitled “Global Witness’s withdrawal of its report on Guyana” are those of this columnist. They do not represent the views of the group that had written to Global Witness expressing concerns relating to certain aspects of its report. The use of the word “we” in that article was in reference to our column and not to the group.

On Thursday, Transparency International will release its 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). It would be of interest to learn how Guyana has been rated and ranked from among the 180 countries surveyed. In 2019, Guyana scored 40 out of 100 and was ranked 85. Although Guyana has shown an improvement by eleven points on the CPI over the period 2015 to 2019, it remains at the bottom of the table from among the English-speaking countries in the Caribbean, as shown at Table I.

Background to the filing of the election petitions

On Sunday, 2 August 2020, the GECOM Chair declared PPP/C presidential candidate, Dr. Irfaan Ali, the ninth Executive President of Guyana. The declaration was made following the recount of all the votes cast in the presence of the CARICOM Supervising Team and in accordance with Article 177(2) of the Constitution:

… if more votes are cast in favour of the list in which a person is designated as Presidential candidate than in favour of any other list, that Presidential candidate shall be deemed to be elected as President and shall be so declared by the Chairman of the Elections Commission acting only on the advice of the Chief Election Officer, after such advice has been tendered to the Elections Commission at a duly summoned meeting.

The GECOM Chair had instructed the Chief Election Officer (CEO) to submit his report based on the results of the recount of all the votes cast. He, however, refused to