…casts doubts on GECOM in front ‘West-Dem’ supporters
LEADER of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Bharrat Jagdeo, has been pushing a narrative on the campaign trail that if the upcoming elections do not put the PPP back in power, then it [the elections] would have been tampered with through rigging.
Most recently, he placed doubt in the minds of supporters at a West Coast Demerara (WCD) rally of whether the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) is able to conduct “free and fair” elections. “Whenever I walk around this country, wherever I go, people say to me, ‘we know the PPP will win the elections if the elections are free and fair’. But will they be free and fair? This is a pressing concern among many Guyanese,” he told the crowd. “That fear you have is justified but don’t think that we are taking it lightly.”
In several letters in the media, persons have pointed out that the party’s general secretary is seemingly setting the stage to possibly challenge the results of an elections result not in the party’s favour. In the past, he has referred to staff of GECOM as “rogue”, stating that the institution is gradually losing credibility.
At the rally on Sunday in Stewartville, WCD, he cast blame on the APNU+AFC Administration as seeking to “rig the elections” through the house-to-house registration exercise. Before the no-confidence motion was debated in the National Assembly in 2018, the government had, in the 2019 budget, allocated $3.36B for the conduct of the house-to-house registration exercise, to facilitate the planned holding of elections in 2020.
The last time house-to-house registration was conducted, thereby refreshing the country’s National Register of Registrants Data Base (NRRDB), was in 2008, some 10 years ago, which all parties involved had deemed the exercise “long overdue”. Later, when the no-confidence motion against the government was making its way through the courts, the house-to-house registration exercise commenced, as scheduled, as there was no final decision yet on whether the motion would stand. The opposition lobbied against the exercise they had previously agreed to as “illegal” and now an attempt to disenfranchise voters.
GECOM Chair, Justice (ret’d) Claudette Singh, discontinued the exercise in August 2019 with only 340,000 registered, with the aim of facilitating early General and Regional Elections, given the ruling on the passing of the no-confidence motion. Although the events were well followed by the public, the opposition leader told supporters at the WCD rally: “They tried again to rig the elections; they tried by using an order signed by the illegal Chairman of GECOM [Justice Patterson] to start a house-to-house registration exercise that would have dropped 50,000 people from our strongholds so they would have been disenfranchised and we said to people, ‘we’re going to fight this too’.”
The exercise was in fact aimed at removing the names of thousands of Guyanese who are either deceased or have migrated, and to include Guyanese eligible to vote for the first time.
GECOM has added over 16,000 new registrants from the halted exercise to the NRRDB and, through a claims and objections period and other security measures at various levels of the list, some 88,000 address changes were made thereby enabling more persons the right to vote.
At the rally, the opposition leader cast doubts about the credibility of the address changes but married his statements with a call for supporters to check the Official List of Electors (OLE) to ensure that their names “are in the right place”. “We have to ensure that every ‘i’ is dotted and every ‘t’ is crossed when we are dealing with APNU and, in fact, all of the polling places where, in the past, they have attempted to put people or to rig the elections, we’re training some of our best polling agents, the strongest people to go in that area,” the opposition leader told his support base. “We are watching them carefully because we can take no chances with APNU.”
However, those observing the opposition leader’s repeated remarks, have pointed out that this may be a tactic to later contest any election result not in his favour. “I have been watching the PPP, its media arms and Mr. Jagdeo’s attack on GECOM and it is becoming very clear what their strategy is. They have not succeeded in their efforts to rattle the very formidable female chairperson, so they have occasioned an all-out, brazen attack on the elections commission and its system. Outlined in Mr. Jagdeo’s ‘concerns’ appears to be a blueprint of how the PPP might have rigged and interfered with prior elections,” stated former parliamentarian, Lurlene Nestor in a letter.
“I believe Mr. Jagdeo and the PPP are prepping for a ‘foul claim’. They also seem bent on interfering or influencing GECOM as it prepares for these most consequential elections.”
She called out the PPP leader for attempting, on various occasions, to instruct GECOM, an independent body tasked with facilitating free, fair and credible elections.
Nestor advised: “While GECOM has a responsibility to ensure that there is no interference, other stakeholders also have a responsibility to ensure that they act to ensure that elections are free and fair. People must therefore be extra vigilant! Mr. Jagdeo seemed to have outlined how he and the PPP may play their cards on elections day. His utterances and apparent concerns must be carefully examined. The intentions of a desperate soul knows no boundary.”
