–          questions credibility of claims, points to lack of proof since 2020 elections

ATTORNEY GENERAL and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, SC, has pushed back against recent claims by Vincent Alexander, a People’s National Congress (PNC) executive suggesting that ballots were cast in the names of individuals who were not present on polling day during the March 2020 elections.

Speaking during his weekly television programme, Issues in the News, on Tuesday, Nandlall said that despite four years passing since the elections, Alexander, PNC’s representative on the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), has yet to provide any evidence to substantiate the claims.
The allegations, which imply large-scale fraudulent voting, have been dismissed by Nandlall as “bizarre,” especially given the rigorous checks and oversight in place on election day.
He explained that the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has mechanisms in place at polling stations, which, according to him, make it nearly impossible for fraudulent votes to be cast.

Nandlall explained that the process requires voters to present an ID card or passport with a photograph, which is checked against a folio containing the voter’s image and information.
This check is conducted in the presence of the presiding officer, deputy presiding officer, and polling agents from all political parties, Nandlall noted.
“Are you telling me that this imposter can appear and fool all these persons who are sitting there?” he asked, challenging Alexander’s assertions.

Against this backdrop, Nandlall further questioned the validity of Alexander’s repeated allegations, highlighting the absence of any evidence.
“Alexander keeps repeating this bizarre allegation over and over again in the newspapers without producing a thread of evidence to support what he’s saying. Not an iota of evidence is presented by Alexander,” Nandlall said.
Nandlall went on to remind the public of the PNC’s acceptance of the voters’ list used in previous elections, noting that the list was deemed legitimate in both the 2011 and 2015 elections—both of which the PNC-led A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) contested successfully.

“When they won the one-seat majority in the 2011 elections, that was the very list they used. It was clean at that time. They won the 2015 elections with that very list, it was clean at that time,” Nandlall said, suggesting that the PNC only questioned the list’s validity after their loss in 2020.
To explain the robustness of Guyana’s electoral process, Nandlall pointed to the presence of multiple international and local observers during the 2020 elections, including CARICOM, the Commonwealth, the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Carter Center.
According to Nandlall, these observers, along with the diplomatic community and local observer bodies, have not substantiated Alexander’s claims.

In response to Alexander’s assertions of a “bloated list” and calls for increased biometric security, Nandlall argued that Guyana’s current manual voting system is effective.
“The manual system is working. Why do you want to resort to technology where things can go wrong in a country like Guyana, where we can have a blackout on election day?” he explained, voicing concerns over potential technical malfunctions.
Nandlall also contended that Alexander’s narrative aligns with historical claims made by the PNC, particularly when faced with electoral losses as he drew parallels to the PNC’s history of electoral rigging in previous decades.

“Alexander is still affected by the ghosts of the 1968 rigging… and the 1985 rigging. They will lose the next elections. So they have already begun to find excuses and reasons why they will lose,” Nandlall said.
He further stressed the importance of countering what he described as “baseless narratives” and reaffirmed the legitimacy of the 2020 election process.
“We have to take time to reject these narratives,” Nandlall said, urging vigilance against unsubstantiated claims that threaten confidence in the country’s democratic process.

Several prominent political figures from the APNU+AFC and GECOM officers are currently before the court over the alleged manipulations and irregularities during the 2020 general elections.
Charged are PNC activist, Carol Smith-Joseph; former Health Minister under the APNU+AFC government, Volda Lawrence; former Chief Elections Officer (CEO) at GECOM, Keith Lowenfield; former Deputy CEO, Roxanne Myers; former District Four (Demerara-Mahaica) Returning Officer, Clairmont Mingo; and GECOM employees Sheffern February, Enrique Livan, Denise Babb-Cummings, and Michelle Miller.

They are accused of a number of offences, including misconduct in public office, uttering forged documents, and plotting to deceive the electors of Guyana by declaring a false account of votes.
It is alleged that the defendants inflated or facilitated the inflation of results for Region Four, the country’s largest voting district, to give the APNU+AFC coalition a majority win at the March 2020 elections, when, in fact, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) had won by over 15,000 votes. All the defendants are on cash bail pending the hearing and determination of their matters.

In April 2023, the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the events of the 2020 General and Regional Elections found that there was collusion and collaboration among senior GECOM officials to divert votes to the APNU +AFC instead of safeguarding and preserving the integrity of the electoral system.

Chairman, Stanley John and commissioners — former Chancellor, Carl Singh and Senior Counsel Godfrey Smith — made those findings based on evidence from the many witnesses who had testified, along with the reports of the international observers.
The report found that Lowenfield blatantly made decisions and employed procedures in direct contradiction to the law and the will of the people. The findings revealed, too, that GECOM staffers ignored specific instructions from the court, used materials that were illegal and/or manipulated, and sided with APNU+AFC agents to berate observers whenever objections were raised.