–‘Coalition’ says PPP afraid of what sustained scrutiny will reveal

By Gabriella Chapman

THE national recount has seen many anomalies being brought to light by the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU)/Alliance For Change (AFC) Coalition party, inconsistencies that seem to suggest that the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) rigged the March 2, 2020 elections.

By way of a statement going the rounds on social media platforms, the ‘Coalition’ is quoted as saying that the recount process has uncovered countless instances of dead persons being recorded as voting exclusively in PPP strongholds, as well as persons who have long migrated from Guyana, and were not here on Elections Day among other damning ‘allegations’.

The statement seems to have incurred the wrath of the Opposition, as their agents on Monday vented about the various allegations contained therein.

Speaking with the media on Monday, the PPP’s Sase Gunraj said that the APNU/AFC statement is intended to denigrate the entire electoral process, and that the allegations should not be passed off as facts to the public.

“The scrutiny must not be by my say-so; you can’t walk in a station and say this person has died, and that becomes a fact without challenge. And that is what is happening here; persons coming and making spurious allegations, and going out there and treating these allegations as though they are true,” Gunraj said. “They must be treated as an allegation,”

he added.

DAMAGE CONTROL
In his attempt to effect what can best be described as some measure of damage control, Gunraj explained that each Polling Station at the March 2 elections had Polling Agents as scrutineers from at least the two major political parties.

“On Elections Day, there were no allegations about dead or migrated persons; now we’re two months into this process, and you’re hearing that. In law, you call that a recent fabrication; these allegations being made in there are highly questionable, and without any basis,” Gunraj said, adding: “And it comes out like that is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and it has been confirmed without a shadow of a doubt. And that is not so; they are putting it out there as a proven fact, when it is just propaganda.”

Taking him up on the issue, APNU/AFC’s Leonard Craig told the media that Gunraj’s position is highly absurd, as all it does is prove that the PPP is afraid of what the continued scrutiny will reveal.
In fact, he said that these observations are not new to the PPP, as it is not the first time they are being raised.

“Our agents are not allowed to disturb the electoral process,” Craig said, adding: “So if you noticed a person without ID came in to vote, and they did not take an oath of identity, you cannot get up and say, ‘Let this election stop now,’ and these kinds of things. What you do is raise your objections; allow the process to continue, and then you make a note.

So, in the intervening period between election and the recount, all those reports from our agents were scanned with a fine-tooth comb… We had two months, and our agents did their research, based on the objections that were made on the day of elections. This is nothing new; members of the public who are going to be consuming this, don’t allow yourselves to be fooled. Nothing new is being introduced.”

He noted that in certain districts, for instance, five of them to be precise, APNU/AFC had asked for a recount, and that recount request was based on the observations that were received from their agents.

“Unfortunately, the recount process was delayed until now. So it’s the same process, and anybody who says otherwise is a stranger to the truth… We are going to take this process to its logical conclusion. Let’s go with the process… Normally, this information we are providing will form part of an elections petition. This recount process has two main objectives, and one is to determine its credibility,” he said.

WELL SUBSTANTIATED
Adding to what Craig had to say, Minister with responsibility for Youth Affairs, Simona Broomes conceded that the APNU/AFC’s allegations are well substantiated with solid proof. She said that their party has a duty to keep the public accurately informed, otherwise they will be faulted.

“The information being put out there by the party is being read out under the observation sheet to the public at the end of the day by GECOM,” she said. “We as a coalition partner have a duty; when we are not reporting to the public what is happening, we are being faulted. The information out there is what we have discovered, so we put it out there, and we have evidence to substantiate what we are saying; we have evidence that was produced to GECOM. It is accurate; that is what we found; that is what we saw.”

She told the Guyana Chronicle that during the Claims and Objections period, the APNU/AFC was advocating to cleanse the list, because they were well aware of the dead people contained therein. She noted, too, that the ‘Coalition’ had objected to some of these regions where anomalies are being found.

“We had asked for a recount in these very regions, and we were refused,” she said, adding: “And we were asking for a recount because of the information that surfaced. Now’s the time to test the accuracy of the information we were given since during the elections. I just want to shut down that whole notion of us not using the Claims and Objections period, because we raised a lot of issues then and after.

This recount is giving us the opportunity in the regions that they had asked for a recount in. We are confident that we won; who vex lose. Why would you be upset? The PPP should be happy that this will allow for more credible results.”