Court of Appeal affirms orders blocking recount no longer stand

The Court of Appeal on Tuesday delivered its orders affirming that the High Court orders blocking a national recount of votes cast on March 2, no longer stands.

The Court, in its orders, did not grant the request of the applicant’s attorneys for the matter to return to the High Court, even though it ruled in her favour that no outside party, in this case, CARICOM, should take over the supervision of the recount process; if GECOM were to do that, it would be unconstitutional, the Court ordered.

The delivery of the orders was delayed because Attorney Roysdale Forde wanted to write the court on the only ground under which it granted the appeal – that the High Court should have been allowed to say whether GECOM was breaching its constitutional supervisory powers by handing over supervision of a recount to CARICOM.

The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has since decided to move ahead with the national recount -a process which the Commission itself will supervise. The Commission has decided that the CARICOM team will be reinvited but to ‘validate’ and give credibility to the recount.

The Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield is expected to present a draft plan on Wednesday to pave the way for the process to commence.

[pdf id=85815]