Barbados’ Prime Minister, Mia Mottley, who also serves as CARICOM’s Chairman, announced moments ago that a team will be in Guyana to supervise the recount of the Region Four votes.
In a statement to the press, the CARICOM Chair reminded that she led a high-level team of Caribbean Prime Ministers to Georgetown earlier this week to meet with all of the affected parties from the recent General Elections of March 2, 2020. Noting that CARICOM has remained engaged over the last few days, the CARICOM Chair said that discussions were held up to this morning with President David Granger. She said that Granger made a request for the Caribbean Community to field an independent high-level team to supervise the re-counting of the ballots in Region Four in accordance with the ruling of Chief Justice (ag) Roxane George on March 11, 2020. The Prime Minister said that this has been agreed to by Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo.
The CARICOM Chair said, “We believe that this is a giant step in being able to determine the will of the Guyanese people in the Election of March 2, 2020. It will also allow the electoral process to regain the confidence of all locally, regionally and internationally. “
She added, “I have spoken directly to both the President and the Leader of the Opposition and they have both committed to abide by the results of a fair and transparent recount of each and every ballot, as supervised by the CARICOM team. We also agreed that there needs to be steps taken to secure the integrity of the ballot boxes until the Recount takes place.”
The CARICOM Chair said that the Independent High-Level Team will be chaired by Francine Baron, former Attorney General and Foreign Minister and comprise Mr. Anthony Boatswain, former Minister of Finance of Grenada and Ms. Cynthia Barrow-Giles, Senior Lecturer in Department of Government of UWI. Mottley said that they will also be accompanied by the two Chief Election Officers from Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago.
She further noted that both President Granger and the Leader of the Opposition have agreed that the recount should commence once the Caricom team is on the ground.
Mottley also confirmed that all efforts are being made to have the team in Guyana as soon as possible. The Guyana Standard understands that a further announcement will be made as to the exact details once the team is on the ground.
