MINISTER of Public Works, Juan Edghill, on Sunday, rubbished several claims made by members of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) officials in Region 10 that the governing People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) paid, intimated and bullied people to support them on Nomination Day.

In a statement posted on his Facebook page, Minister Edghill said the APNU is unable to deal with the huge support that Linden gave to the PPP and their response to that is “lies, fabrications, misinformation, and misdirection.”

Linden is one of the strongholds of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNC/R)-led APNU.

For the June 12 Local Government Elections, the PPP/C is running candidates in all 610 constituencies across the 80 Local Authority Areas (LAA), with a total of 2,020 candidates and over 26,000 backers.

Minister Edghill stated that the opposition is “deeply hurt” because they have lost support in Linden and witnessed people openly pledge their support for the PPP/C by appearing with their candidates, backers, and supporters.

“No one forced, paid, intimidated or bullied anyone,” Minister Edghill said, reiterating that that even if the PPP/C paid people to wear the party t-shirts, they cannot buy enthusiasm.

He added, “the people marched and went to GECOM. The APNU spent one hour and forty minutes to get their list fixed inside of GECOM office. It started raining [and] the people remained. Absolutely no one was bullied to remain in the rain.”

In refuting allegations that PPP/C t-shirts were dumped on the road after the march on Nomination Day, Minister Edghill noted that it has been nearly a week since the march and the PNC accusers are yet to present any strong evidence of PPP/C jerseys being dumped anywhere.

“We live in a world where virtually everyone owns a smartphone. Moreover, knowing the mischievous nature of the PNC, if there was a single jersey that was disposed, photos would have immediately made the rounds on social media.

“The reality is we ran out of jerseys; we did not have enough jerseys to give to supporters on Monday. There were people in the march and procession that did not wear PPP branded jerseys,” Edghill noted.

According to Minister Edghill, “the PNC has gone back into their same five months mode of lies spinning, ‘kerfuffling’ things and turning things around.”