Chief election officer says no bias in ID card distribution Stabroek News March 15, 2000 There was no bias in the distribution of voter identification (ID) cards before the 1997 elections, according to a report presented to court by Stanley Singh yesterday. Before a packed courtroom that included for the second day PNC leader Desmond Hoyte, the chief election officer (CEO) was led by Senior Counsel, Doodnauth Singh for over one hour as he detailed his role in the disputed 1997 elections. This included the registration of voters, the distribution of ID cards, changes in officials, international funding, the system for counting and announcing votes and the declarations of the results. Half-way through this testimony, Senior Counsel Rex McKay, Hoyte's lawyer, could take it no more and strenuously objected: "Your honour, what is the relevance of this evidence?" He said that the petitioner had asked questions about particular matters and these were what the respondent had to address. Doodnauth Singh retorted that the petitioner had queried the entire process and that any procedure pertaining to the elections was therefore relevant and that the respondent was entitled to prove in any way that the elections were conducted freely and fairly. This caused some gasps and sounds of annoyance from among the spectators. Responding to McKay's repeated assertion that this was not a numbers game, Doodnauth Singh said that the petitioner knew this was the weakness of the case and had not challenged a single statement of poll. Raphael Trotman, counsel for the petitioner Esther Perreira, jumped to his feet refuting Doodnauth Singh's statement, claiming that many SOP's had been disputed. The senior counsel repeated that while the absence of signatures had been an issue, the petitioner was not disputing the accuracy of the results. Justice Claudette Singh ended the argument by ruling she would not shut out any evidence in this case. So the witness continued his lengthy treatise on the technical intricacies of producing ID cards. Soon after, his counsel attempted to enter his official report of the 1997 elections into evidence. Up rose McKay again objecting to its admissibility. "Your honour, the witness cannot have knowledge of all that is in the report." Doodnauth Singh replied that the CEO was responsible for the report and thus could testify to its contents. The judge allowed its admission saying that McKay would have his opportunity in cross-examination to question the credibility of the evidence. The CEO then read from the report the number of voters for each region and the number of ID cards distributed as this would show there was no discriminatory manner to the distribution process as claimed by the petitioner. Region ..............Number of voters ..............Number of cards dist ..............% One .....................12,377 ............ ........................11,172 .............................90.2 Two ....................27,500 ......................................26,020 .............................94.6 Three ................62,495 .......................................59,137 .............................94.6 Four ..................200,295 ....................................186,565 ............................93.1 Five ..................32,031 .......................................30,727 ..............................95.9 Six ...................79,133 .......................................75,078 ...............................94.8 Seven ..............10,726 .........................................9,125 ...............................85.0 Eight ................4,864 ..........................................4,125 ...............................91.2 Nine................ 8,628 ..........................................7,803 ................................91.1 Ten .................23,366 ......................................21,315 ................................91.2 Total ...............461,415 .................................431,777 ................................93.4% The CEO testified that on December 19, 1997 he had made a report to the Elections Commission declaring the results of the election in which the PPP gained 220,667 of the votes, PNC 161,901, The United Force 5,937, and the Alliance for Guyana 4,783. In the last few minutes of the morning session McKay started cross-examination, asking the CEO why he had made another report on December 29. The witness admitted it was because the chairman of the Elections Commission had asked him to. McKay also asked if the commission was paying for his defence, but Singh said he did not know. The petition, which will resume tomorrow, was brought by Perreira on the grounds that the elections process was so flawed as to be unable to accurately reflect the will of the people.