GECOM Public Relations Officer Yolanda Ward testified today that she acted on instructions from senior election officials to publish, replace and later remove 24 declarations from the Commission’s website during the 2020 General and Regional Elections.
Ward was testifying in the high-profile election fraud trial before Magistrate Faith McGusty at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Courts.
Ward told the court that in March 2020, she was responsible for the dissemination and publication of public information on behalf of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), including coordinating the upload of information to the Commission’s website.
She testified that on March 7, 2020, then Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield provided her with a consolidated set of Form 24 declarations for the 10 electoral districts, which she was instructed to have published on GECOM’s website.
According to Ward, she received the documents on a flash drive, transferred them to her computer and emailed them to then IT Manager Aneal Giddings, copying Lowenfield. Giddings subsequently confirmed that the documents had been uploaded, and Ward said she checked the website and saw the declarations for the General and Regional Elections for Districts One to Ten.
Ward further testified that on March 14, 2020, she was instructed by Lowenfield to remove the previously published Form 24 declaration for District Four and replace it with two new documents. She said she received the replacement documents from the Office of the Chief Election Officer and emailed Giddings with instructions for the previously published declaration to be removed and the replacement documents uploaded.
During cross-examination, Ward said she had no knowledge of how the signatures appearing on the replacement documents were placed there. She also confirmed that she was not familiar with the signatures of former Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo or then People’s Progressive Party/Civic representative Volda Lawrence and could not authenticate the signatures.
Ward also testified that on July 24, 2020, GECOM Chairperson retired Justice Claudette Singh requested that all Form 24 declarations be removed from the Commission’s website. Ward said the request was communicated to Giddings, who subsequently confirmed that the documents had been removed. She then checked the website and confirmed that the Form 24 declarations were no longer there.
She told the court that on the same day, the Chairperson also requested that the final results of the elections be published on GECOM’s website. Ward said the declarations were subsequently sent to Giddings for publication, and she later checked the website and confirmed that they had been uploaded.
Ward further testified that on September 21, 2020, Justice Singh informed her that she had received a call concerning a report made about the publication of declarations on GECOM’s website. The Chairperson subsequently asked Ward to provide the dates on which the declarations were published.
Ward said that after providing the dates, she was taken to the CID Headquarters, where she gave a statement concerning the dates on which the declarations were published. She also provided copies of emails that had been sent and the declarations that were published.
During cross-examination, Ward said she had no evidence that any of the nine accused persons colluded to defraud the electorate, rigged the 2020 General and Regional Elections, or forged signatures or election documents.
She told the court that she was a Public Relations Officer and was not involved in the counting of ballots, the tabulation of Statements of Poll or the verification of election declarations. Ward said she did not independently verify the documents she received before they were sent for publication and did not compare them with original Form 24 declarations.
