The PPP/C has emerged the win­ner of March 2, 2020, Gen­er­al and Re­gion­al Elec­tions fol­low­ing the na­tion­al re­count of the fi­nal bal­lot box (#4877) from Re­gion 4 (De­mer­ara-Ma­haica) at the Arthur Chung Con­fer­ence Cen­tre (AC­CC) on Sun­day.

The PPP/C gained in ex­cess of 15,500 votes over its main ri­val, A Part­ner­ship for Na­tion­al Uni­ty/Al­liance for Change (AP­NU/AFC).

The elec­tions re­count was wit­nessed by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all the nine (9) po­lit­i­cal par­ties that con­test­ed the elec­tions, ob­servers from Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com), the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) and lo­cal ob­servers in­clud­ing the Pri­vate Sec­tion Com­mis­sion and Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce (AM­CHAM).

On March 2, the orig­i­nal count­ing of the bal­lots cast had pro­ceed­ed smooth­ly and had been com­plet­ed in nine (9) re­gions with the PPP/C in a com­mand­ing lead.

How­ev­er, the tab­u­la­tion of State­ments of Poll (SOP’s) was in­ter­rupt­ed in Dis­trict Four (De­mer­ara-Ma­haica) af­ter Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cer Clair­mont Min­go switched from the le­gal pro­ce­dure – which en­sures trans­paren­cy where each SOP – that is each SOP had to be ex­hib­it­ed to the stake­hold­ers present to en­able com­par­i­son to their copies. How­ev­er, Min­go di­vert­ed to a pro­ce­dure where the pur­port­ed num­bers from the SOP’s were in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to a con­sol­i­dat­ed spread­sheet. This led to im­me­di­ate calls for trans­paren­cy from both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers.

Af­ter re­course to the High Court, when all the par­ties ex­cept­ing AP­NU/AFC protest­ed the sleight of hand that fa­cil­i­tat­ed an in­fla­tion of the votes for that par­ty.

Fol­low­ing a High Court’s de­ci­sion, Min­go was or­dered to re­vert to the pre­scribed pro­ce­dure but he re­peat­ed his sub­terfuge in an­oth­er guise and sub­mit­ted to­tals that var­ied sub­stan­tial­ly from those of oth­er par­ties and had the AP­NU/AFC ahead rather than the PP­PC.

The Chair­woman of GECOM, re­tired Jus­tice Claudette Singh agreed to a re­count of the all votes, which had been pro­posed by care­tak­er Pres­i­dent David Granger and agreed to by Op­po­si­tion Leader Bhar­rat Jagdeo af­ter an in­ter­ven­tion by sev­er­al Cari­com lead­ers.

Since then both lead­ers have recom­mit­ted to ac­cept­ing the re­sults of the re­count.

As the re­count process wound down, voic­es from the do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty – lo­cal Church lead­ers, the Pri­vate Sec­tor Com­mis­sion, the US State De­part­ment, Am­bas­sadors of the US, EU, UK, Cari­com, OAS have been call­ing for an ac­cep­tance of the re­count by all the par­ties lead­ing to a peace­ful tran­si­tion for the new gov­ern­ment that has been cho­sen by the peo­ple of Guyana.