THE Alliance For Change (AFC) has refused to renounce claims that the People’s Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/C) administration led by President Dr.Irfaan Ali was installed by the ABCE countries.

At a press conference on Friday, AFC’s David Patterson skirted around claims that the AFC and its then coalition partner the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), had won the 2020 general elections.

When asked by the Guyana Chronicle if the party was still holding on this claim, Patterson in a brief response stated: “We acknowledge that we are in the opposition so I don’t see any claim.”

The AFC had previously said that there was external interference in the election.

However, the PPP/C remains unaffected by the efforts to discredit the party and question the results of the election. The PPP/C government had recently debunked the claims of outside interface in the election while recalling a series of events that occurred after voting had ended.

Pointing to the country’s Constitution, which states that that after a successful no-confidence motion in the National Assembly, an election must be called within three months.

However, the APNU+AFC then lead by David Granger did not call an election within that time frame. In fact, it was only after faced with extreme pressure that a day was set some 14 months after the successful no-confidence motion.

This issue was litigated through the corridors of the judiciary in Guyana by the PPP/C from January 2019 to September 2019 all the way to Guyana’s apex court, the Caribbean Court of Justice, which ruled in July 2019 that elections had to be held within three months of the successful passage of the no-confidence motion, albeit delayed due to the ongoing litigation.

It was only after protracted peaceful street protests and international and regional pressure for the setting of a date for elections, that President Granger declared in October 2019 that general and regional elections would be held on March 2, 2020. This delay was nothing but a display of executive lawlessness and abuse of power.

Additionally, there has been widespread evidence of the coalition’s attempt to rig the elections. This was unearthed during a five-month recount process, which had declared Irfaan Ali as the country’s president.

To date, several individuals linked to the coalition are before the local courts to answer to electoral fraud charges.

The trial first began on July 29, 2024; however, it was later delayed as Senior Magistrate Leron Daly was granted medical leave to recover from an illness.

The matter was called before the court earlier this week, but was postponed as the magistrate remains on medical leave.