Fraud, misconduct charges against Lowenfield for court hearing today

0

The Georgetown Magistrates’ Court will today hear the private criminal charges filed against Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield for fraud and misconduct.

Desmond Morian, a citizen, is contending that Lowenfield, while performing his duties as CEO of GECOM, ascertained the results of the March 2 elections “knowing the said results to be false, the said willful misconduct amounting to a breach of the public’s trust in the office of the Chief Elections Officer of GECOM).”

Meanwhile, Daniel Josh Kanhai, a member of The New Movement Party, filed a charge claiming that “the accused between the 5th day of March and 23rd day of June 2020 at Georgetown in the Georgetown Magisterial District, County of Demerara, State of Guyana conspired with person(s) unknown to commit the common law offence of fraud, to wit, by representing to the Guyana Elections Commission, that tables attached to his Election Report dated 23rd June 2020 accurately reflected the true results of the said election, in order to materially alter the results of the said election with intent to defraud knowing the said tabulation to be false.”

In Lowenfield’s report, the CEO had claimed that the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) coalition garnered 171,825 votes while the PPP/C gained 166,343 votes.

How the CEO arrived at those figures is unknown, since the certified results from the legally conducted recount exercise supervised by GECOM and a high-level team from the Caribbean Community (Caricom) pellucidly show that the PPP/C won with 233,336 votes while the APNU/AFC garnered 217,920.

---