–warns against repeat of 2020 electoral fiasco

FRANCE’S Ambassador to Suriname and Guyana, Nicolas de Lacoste, has called for Guyana’s upcoming General and Regional Elections to be conducted in a peaceful and orderly manner, while urging the country to avoid a repeat of the highly controversial 2020 polls.

“We are all expecting that they will go in an orderly manner, that everything will work well,” the Ambassador told the Guyana Chronicle during an exclusive interview on Wednesday.
Reflecting on Suriname’s recent elections, he added, “We just went through an electoral cycle in Suriname, and we can see that organisation described it as a peaceful and an orderly manner. That is all we wish for in Guyana and avoid the situation we had five years ago.”

Guyana is scheduled to hold its next General and Regional Elections on September 1, 2025 and the government has already committed to inviting credible international observer missions, including the Carter Center, which was previously blocked from fully participating in the 2020 recount by the then APNU+AFC administration.

The 2020 elections were marred by widespread allegations of fraud and an extended political standoff that lasted over five months. These elections were called early after President David A. Granger’s government lost a vote of no confidence in December 2018, leading to heightened political tensions and expectations.

A Commission of Inquiry (CoI), launched by the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) government and supported by international partners, found damning evidence of collusion within the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to rig the results in favour of the APNU+AFC coalition.

The CoI concluded that senior GECOM officials including former Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield, former Deputy CEO Roxanne Myers, and former Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo were central to attempts to subvert the electoral outcome.

In what has become one of the darkest chapters in Guyana’s democratic history, Mingo allegedly manipulated tabulations in Region Four, significantly inflating the APNU+AFC’s vote count.
The official recount process, supervised by a high-level CARICOM team, later confirmed that the PPP/C had won the elections with 233,336 votes, while the APNU+AFC had received 217,920—a stark difference from the fraudulent numbers declared by Lowenfield in his initial report.

All three former GECOM officials, along with several others including Carol Smith-Joseph, Volda Lawrence, and GECOM staffers, are currently before the court facing 19 charges related to conspiracy and electoral fraud.

The Ambassador’s comments come as international and regional stakeholders begin turning their attention to Guyana’s electoral preparations.
The PPP/C Government has consistently maintained its commitment to democratic processes, with President Irfaan Ali assuring that the upcoming elections will be transparent, inclusive, and closely monitored by international partners.

It is important to understand that the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the events of the 2020 General and Regional Elections found that there was collusion and collaboration between senior GECOM officials to divert votes to the APNU +AFC instead of safeguarding and preserving the integrity of the electoral system.
Chairman Stanley John and commissioners — former Chancellor, Carl Singh and Senior Counsel Godfrey Smith made these findings based on evidence from the many witnesses who testified along with the reports of the international observers.

“…our inquiry reveals that there were, in fact, shockingly brazen attempts by Chief Election Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield, Deputy Chief Election Officer (DCEO) Roxanne Myers and Returning Officer (RO) Clairmont Mingo to derail and corrupt the statutorily prescribed procedure for the counting, ascertaining and tabulation of votes of the March 2nd election, as well as the true declaration of the results of that election, and that they did so – to put it in unvarnished language of the ordinary man – for the purpose of stealing the election,” the commissioners said in their report.

The report found that Lowenfield blatantly made decisions and employed procedures in direct contradiction to the law and the will of the people. The findings revealed too that GECOM staffers ignored specific instructions from the court, used materials that were illegal and or manipulated, and sided with APNU+AFC agents to berate observers whenever objections were raised.

After careful scrutiny, the COI commissioners concluded that there was a conscious and deliberate – even brazen –effort to violate the provisions of section 84(1) of the Representation of the People Act (RoPA)
In so doing, certain “senior GECOM officials” abandoned all need for neutrality and impartiality, and demonstrated a bias for the APNU+AFC and, in the course of events over those days, showed an “open connection” with that party, and by their efforts sought a desired result for the coalition.

As such, the commissioners said that after consideration and analysis of the evidence, Lowenfield, Mingo and Myers “were principally responsible for clear and deliberate attempts to frustrate, obstruct and subvert the ascertainment of votes in electoral district No. 4.”