AT 5.55 pm on election day 1973, I was the polling agent at Richmond Village polling station, when two GDF soldiers pointed their guns at me and ordered me out of the polling station. A crowd of about 200 people were kept at some distance. I then observed that the ballot box was then removed by the soldiers and placed in the army jeep about 10 feet from where I was standing. I questioned the soldiers as to where they were taking the box and they said that they would fix me up and raised their guns to my chest. At that moment I saw the Returning Officer who was escorted to the army jeep talking with the two GDF soldiers.. The army jeep then was driven off abruptly.
My colleagues and I later followed the jeep after it had spent some time collecting more ballot boxes. On our way to the Anna Regina Airstrip at Red Lock, 10 soldiers deployed from a GDF truck held up our cars at gun point and all the occupants were made to lie on the ground outside while the car seats were ripped open. Both the Homeroom and Suddie ballot boxes arrived at the airstrip after 10pm. Not a single polling agent of any opposition party was allowed to travel with the boxes. Several of the agents who tried to travel with the boxes were brutally ejected. At the main road leading to the Red Lock airstrip, soldiers were blocking the entrance, no one was allowed to pass be it agent or candidate. I was pushed down by the GDF soldiers when I demanded to have a look at the ballot boxes.
From 10 pm on Monday night to 10 am on Wednesday morning only then comrade Ishak Basir was permitted to look at the Pomeroon District ballot boxes which were then lying at the Guyana Technical Institute in Georgetown. We then received news that 17-year old Jagan Ramessar and 43-year old Jack Bhola Nauth a/k Parmanand, the father of five, were shot dead at No 64 Village, Corentyne by the security forces on the said election day.