— Ramjattan threatens to boycott tripartite talks; Nagamootoo calls claim ‘spurious and reckless’
ALLIANCE For Change (AFC) Leader Khemraj Ramjattan, speaking at a news conference held yesterday at the Sidewalk Café on Middle Street, Georgetown, expressed how ‘insulted’ he felt to have learnt of President Donald Ramotar’s statements that the AFC and ‘A Partnership for National Unity’ (APNU) had rigged the just-concluded general and regional elections. Ramjattan even ventured to say that the president’s remarks put heavy pressure on the tripartite arrangement between government and the opposition, and may even result in him (Ramjattan) not engaging in those talks any longer.
The president’s remarks on rigging were published in last Sunday’s edition of the Chronicle, in an exclusive interview in which President Ramotar said: “They (the opposition) did a lot of wicked things in South Georgetown and some other areas, where they created an atmosphere not to have any PPP/C polling agents around; and they managed to get them out by terrible hostility and threatening violence and so on.
“They penetrated GECOM and controlled (to some extent) the election machinery, where they were not even taking instructions from the Chairman or the Chief Elections Officer; and they were doing a lot of manipulation at that point in time.
“Even with the counting, I understand that they kept people far away, so that they could not see what was happening. That was confirmed to me by independent observers…I think that there was some level of manipulation on the part of the opposition.”
Ramjattan told the media yesterday that the president was way out of line, and that the AFC was totally disgusted by the remarks. As such, he is calling for Ramotar to apologise and retract the statements.
“The remarks that we are riggers are so repugnant I personally don’t want to go and sit back with him at the tripartite talks. I will have to bring this to my national executive. It is really insulting, and to say that the AFC is involved in rigging. Quite frankly, I feel very bitter about what he has done,” Ramjattan said.
AFC Executive Member Moses Nagamootoo was also at the press conference, and he pointed out that the president’s remarks were “what brought me out here with a passion, because I believe that this allegation is nothing more than a massive diversion from what he should be concentrating on (at) this moment.”

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Nagamootoo said government should be focusing its attention instead on the country’s crime wave, and on the flooding taking place in various parts of Guyana at present.
He called the president’s remarks “spurious and reckless” allegations, claiming the statements were a diversion of trying to find an explanation for Ramotar’s defeat.
Nagamootoo said the AFC accepts that the elections were free, open, and certified as being fair and acceptable; but the accusation that the AFC and APNU rigged the elections is a blatant lie.