US was preparing economic sanctions...

Predates

Personally, he said that his relationship with Washington predates the 2020 elections, and he said that he had been the one that briefed the United States on the results of the December 2018 No Confidence Motion.

“During the no confidence motion. I was sitting in Parliament, that’s when it happened. And the US, the US was also very concerned about the no confidence motion, because of course, all the rumours … and what’s going to happen and so on and so on,” he said.

“I’ve always had a very good relationship with the US Embassy and the leaders in that embassy. And so, one of the things I did was informed them of the results of the No Confidence Motion, that night,” he added.

“I’ve always been in touch with them. They know the role that I played in 2008, when we had scrapped the old database in 2008. And when… I had flown to Jamaica, from Washington, and the Jamaicans had actually showed us how they used the biometrics for their registration process. When I came back home and talked to [Steve] Surujbally [former Chairman of GECOM], [then PNC and Opposition Leader Robert] Corbin and [then President Bharrat] Jagdeo. And then they sent a team to Jamaica and [when they] came back and [GECOM] did the new complete house-to-house [registration],” he said.

“So they [the US] knew the role the private sector was playing, and knew the role particularly which I was playing, as we were through the entire process and did the complete new registration process… where we were registering every person now with their biometrics,” he added.

The software he had recommended to do the changeover to a biometric system for registration, according to Gouveia, had cost the country some US$600,000.