Sanjeev Datadin. File photo courtesy Guyana Palace.
GEORGETOWN, Guyana--The blatant attempts by Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield and Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo, to manipulate the results of the March 2 General and Regional elections in favour of the incumbent A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/C), must be condemned by all stakeholders in the strongest possible manner, says People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) candidate and attorney-at-law Sanjeev Datadin, adding that the deliberate acts by these officials, who he reminded are being paid by the State, have caused Guyana to be the laughing stock of the region and the entire world.
“This is utterly ridiculous: people are looking at us and wondering what is wrong in Guyana? … Why is it a public official, paid by the State, is trying to fix an election for one party? And this is not a subtle thing, it is blatant,” the attorney expressed during a virtual programme on Wednesday.
Lowenfield is being accused of a fourth attempt to alter the results of the March 2 General and Regional Elections, following his submission of a second report with allegedly doctored figures on Tuesday.
The CEO submitted to Guyana Elections Commission GECOM Chair, Retired Justice Claudette Singh, a report containing numbers which do not reflect those certified at the national recount which was deemed credible by a high-profile team from the Caribbean Community CARICOM.
In fact, neither do the figures included in Lowenfield’s latest report correspond with those in his first report to the Chairperson. He is accused of seeking to dump more than 115,000 valid votes and indicating a “victory” for the APNU/AFC, in his latest report.
However, Datadin posited that there is no foundation for the numbers that Lowenfield has put out, “and that needs to be clear.”
“What he [Lowenfield – Ed.] is trying to do is to actually rig an election, with the world watching; it takes some courage to blatantly rig an election,” the attorney said.
“We had a recount and the recount figures do not match anything produced by these public officials. This is unspeakable – the wrong that they are doing,” Datadin told viewers.
“It’s almost unbelievable: every time you think the public officials involved will not be so brazen, will not be so dishonest, and they are going to do the right thing, they invent a way to do the wrong thing and they proceed to do it as if everybody is unaware of what they are doing,” he added.
Several calls have since been made for Lowenfield to be suspended and for an investigation to be launched into his conduct due to what some call his blatant bias shown towards the APNU/AFC. ~ iNews Guyana ~
