…Coalition submits list of persons who were not in country but listed as voted
…says feedback from Immigration Department favourable

One day after it was disclosed that the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has initiated an investigation into allegations that Guyanese, who were out of the jurisdiction on Elections Day, are marked as having voted, the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) revealed that it supplied GECOM with 600 names to support its claims, and the response from the Immigration Department, it said, is favorable.

“I want to point out to you that we have sent a first batch of 600 such information to GECOM, and we are reliably informed that immigration has confirmed more than 90% of them that were ticked, according to their records are out of the jurisdiction,” APNU+AFC Executive Member Aubrey Norton told reports on Friday as Day 24 of the National Recount came to a close at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC).

The APNU+AFC is contending that more than 1,200 Guyanese, who were out of the jurisdiction on Elections Day, are marked on the Official List of Elections as having voted. Further to that, it is contending that the names of more than 40 dead persons are also marked off on the Official List of Electors as having voted. According to Norton, the coalition has also initiated the process of supplying the Elections Commission with the Death Certificates to prove its case.

It was Elections Commissioner Vincent Alexander, who on Thursday, disclosed that in effort to confirm or negate allegations that Guyanese, who were outside of the jurisdiction on E-Day, are as marked as voted, the Elections Commission (GECOM) has requested immigration records from the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Support Services.
“Like I said on a previous occasion, the Chief Immigration Officer under Regulation 40 of the National Registration Act has an obligation to periodically provide that information to the Chief Registration Officer (who is also the Chief Elections Officer). So I think within that context, the Chief Registration Officer has requested information from the Chief Immigration Officer,” Alexander had said.

On Friday, he again confirmed that a list of names was dispatched to the Chief Immigration Officer for verification as part of an investigation being conducted by GECOM. “I have said previously, that in relation to the migrants, that information some days ago would have been forwarded to the Chief Immigration Officer. So they have in fact embarked on the process of discerning or determining whether the information is evidential,” Alexander iterated.

But Elections Commissioner Sase Gunraj, in a separate interview, contending that no such investigation has been launched into the allegations made by the APNU+AFC, even as he maintained that under the Constitution and the Electoral Laws of the country, the Elections Commission has no legal authority to determine electoral fraud.

“GECOM has taken no decision; the Commission has taken absolutely no decision in so far as it relates to treating with any of the issues that have arisen or may arise during this recount process,” Gunraj told reporters on the outskirts of the Conference Centre.

Further, he rejected reports by Alexander that the Commission has subjected a list of names to the Chief Immigration Officer for verification. “I want to reject, as well, any contention that GECOM has sought or will seek information from any extraneous agency to deal with that and to conduct any investigation on its own volition or otherwise into these allegations that were raised during this period,” Gunraj said.

But outside of the issues of persons voting in the place of the dead and those who were out of the country on March 2, Norton told reporters that there are other “facts” about the 2020 Elections that cannot be disputed. “The facts confirmed PPP/C’s electoral fraud. We have seen from this process, many ballots that were not stamped and those votes were for the APNU+AFC and therefore indicative of fraud. Two, we have seen missing Oaths of Identity, that’s a fact and this process has confirmed that.

We have seen in this process, APNU+AFC ballots found in PPP’s envelopes, and again this is a fact that has been confirmed by this process. We have seen missing certificates of employment, this is another fact confirmed by this process. We have seen more voters that are ticked on the list, a fact that has been confirmed by this process,” Norton submitted.
In an attempt to support his position, Norton said from a total of 699 ballot boxes, 284 had missing Poll Books – an anomaly that cannot be ignored.

Further to that, Norton said as the votes in Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo) are being recounted, there are more and more “irregularities” surfacing. According to him, in that Electoral District there is an alarming number of people who voted without any form of Identification, and in the absence of such, did not take Oaths of Identity.

“In Box 9040 at Tabatinga Nursery, 18 persons voted no ID, no Oath of Identification. In the same Tabatinga Nursery, another group of 18 voted, no ID, no Oath of Identity.

Tabatinga Sports Complex, 11 persons voted without ID and without Oath of Identification. So what we are seeing here, is that in two close buildings with a few ballot boxes, more than 50 people voted, who should not have voted,” Norton reported, while described them as acts of fraud. These irregularities, he posited, were included in the Observation Reports.

Turning his attention to Region Seven, Norton said that in Ballot Box 7077 there were two missing Oaths of Identity. Those irregularities, he contended, is just a tip of the iceberg. “Essentially, when you look at what is happening in Regions Seven, Nine and Eight, the trend continues, and the specific characteristics of these far flung areas is, a lot of people voting without Oaths of Identity, without an ID card and that constitutes fraud,” he contended.

These irregularities, the APNU+AFC Executive Member maintained, cannot be ignored by the Elections Commission and ought to be investigated thoroughly to determine the credibility of the Elections before any declaration is made.