…says PPP/C attempting to change narrative on electoral fraud

By Gabriella Chapman
SINCE the commencement of the national recount, the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) has been saying that the coalition is in receipt of credible evidence to prove that persons who have migrated, and persons who are dead have been listed as voting at the March 2, 2020 elections.

The party also said that they intend to use this recount as the opportunity to expose the illegal acts of the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) at the elections.
Thus far, all these claims have been ventilated through the media, and on several occasions, commissioners would have confirmed strange findings in boxes from PPP/C stronghold areas. This has led to the opposition using varying medium to purport a twisted version of the narrative, for it to be in their favour.

However, on the issue of the dead and migrated voters, the coalition remains resolute that their findings are credible. Speaking with the media on Tuesday, APNU+AFC agent, Ganesh Mahipaul, said that he was made aware that persons are using the Facebook platform to accuse his party of lying to the public. He said that he is aware that at this time, every party will want to have its own narrative, but the public must not be misguided into thinking that the claims of the APNU+AFC are on falsified grounds.

Mahipaul said that through several posts, persons said that they were claimed to be dead by the APNU+AFC, but they are very much alive, leaving the public to believe that these are tales being told by the coalition. However, he explained that his party is making objections from the Official List of Electors (OLE), while the PPP/C is using an old list that doesn’t correspond with their numbers.
“This morning at station five, the PPP counting agent came up to me and showed me three names of persons that are living in Leonora and I live in Leonora too. He said how can we object to these three names when he confirms that these people are alive and well… PPP is using a list of electors that is not the official list of electors.

Leading up to the March 2 elections there were a series of lists that came out, and after the list you had the claims and objections period, and from the claims and objections period, a new list was generated. And the final list that is generated, is the official list of electors, which is a pink list. The serial numbers that are on the pink list are different from the serial numbers on the other lists.

For example my serial number where I had to vote was 127, but on the pink list it is 115. When we are making our objections we are referencing from the numbers on the pink list which is the official list of electors. So all the persons who are posting on Facebook saying that they are alive and well, I wish to let them know that they were not alleged to be dead by our party. I am 110 per cent sure that our objections aren’t to those who posted on Facebook,” Mahipaul clarified.

CHANGE NARRATIVE
Based on this occurrence, he said that “I am deriving that the People’s Progressive Party is trying to change the narrative, they are trying to distract Guyanese and in their attempt to do that, I believe they are creating greater division among our people. I’m saying that to say when you go to someone and you ask them to make a video and to put this thing out, you’re trying to paint a picture that our claims are false. I wish to say to Guyana and the world at large, that our claims aren’t false. It is being done through extensive and intensive fieldwork and we know that the persons we have objected to have either migrated, and did not return to this country, on or before March 2, or they are dead.”

Explaining their investigation strategy, Mahipaul said that the APNU+AFC has a field operation going on, and persons are inquiring about migration and deaths, and they are feeding the agents at the recount centre with the information so that they can make the necessary objections. He reminded that the government was lobbying for a sanitised list of electors before March 2, but that was not granted, so they were already aware that the list would have been padded.

It was on those grounds the party launched their preliminary investigation to equip themselves with all the names of dead people on the list, and all those who migrated. So at the recount, when going through names on the official, pink OLEs that have been marked off as voted, they can scan their list of dead and migrated, and can make their objection if they are able to match any of the names. Providing one such example, Mahipaul made available the death certificate of a voter from district two.

From ballot box 210, serial number 257 was registered as 81-year-old Chitnandani Ramdass, but the party has a death certificate confirming that Ramdass died on June 6, 2015.

He said for his station alone, he has over 100 death certificates to scan through while they are going through boxes, to see if any of those persons have voted. Mahipaul also said, that in relation to the migrated persons, what they have is family members confirming that individuals were not in the country at the time of elections, and when the time comes to produce evidence, they will do so to the commission.