Georgetown: Former President David Granger has filed a $2.6 Billion lawsuit against Stabroek News, Kaieteur News, Guyana Times newspapers and Public Communications Specialist Kit Nascimento after sustaining a barrage of attacks from March 2020 to August 2020 while being accused of facilitating the process of rigged elections.
The lawsuit is in response to statements that were contained in various letters written by Nascimento and published in the three newspapers last year just after the elections.
Through his Attorney, Senior Counsel Roysdale Forde, the former President is contending that the published letters which were written by Kit Nascimento contained statements that were libelous against him and which sought to impugn his character.
The attorney noted that the letters were written and published over a period of time and attacked Granger’s handling of the issues surrounding the 2020 elections and the aftermath. Granger was President at the time.
Among the reliefs being sought are a retraction and apology, a number of injunctions against the republishing of the letters or repeating the statements made in them and the permanent removal of the offending letters from the online edition of the newspapers.
In the lawsuit, Granger contends that the publication of the letters was intended to and calculated to affect him as a Politician and a leader in the community and country with a view of lowering him in the estimation of right thinking persons in the news.
According to Granger, the opinion pieces suggested that he was unfit to be President of Guyana, involved in criminal and illegal activities and practices, dishonest and deceitful, habitually hypocritical, a liar, of dubious credibility and honest, and of unsound mind.
Further, Granger claims that the pieces penned by Nascimento suggested that he was complicit in an obvious and determined decision of the APNU/AFC to remain in Government regardless of the expressed will of the people in the March 2, 2020, General and Regional Elections.
According to the former Head of State, during the election period, he made several public broadcasts to the nation in which he communicated to the nation, the Diplomatic Community, and Civil Society that:
“As President of Guyana and Leader of the Government, it is my policy that any declaration coming from the Chairman of GECOM will be accepted by the Government of Guyana.”
Granger said that the publications suggested that he encouraged and or supported efforts to move to the Courts inclusive of the Court of Appeal and the Caribbean Court of Justice to deny the Chairman of GECOM of her authority to produce the elections results.
He said that the publications inferred that he wanted to remain in power without any regard or care of the consequences it would have on the country.
Moreover, Granger said that the publications would cause people to believe that he used invented irregularities to claim a victory for himself as President and the APNU/AFC at the national elections and that he consistently and dishonestly refused to accept the results of those elections.
However, Guyanese, after casting their votes on March 2, 2020, had to endure an unimaginable wait for the results of the General and Regional Elections, as they witnessed alleged unlawful acts and a slew of legal challenges.
In this time, the patience of the electorate was tested, as electors observed what was described as attempts by the then incumbent A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Coalition to rip the democratic fabric of the nation, with “delay tactics” which were openly criticised by a wide section of society.
It was only after the legal challenges and international intervention that a national recount of all votes cast was convened and the figures showed that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) received 233,336 votes, while the APNU+AFC Coalition got 217,920 votes.
Senior officials of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), including the Chief Elections Officer (CEO), Keith Lowenfield, and Returning Officer for Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), Clairmont Mingo, are already before the courts for “misconduct in public office.”
As reported, those who have been charged with offences relating to electoral fraud and misconduct in public office are: Chairperson of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR), Volda Lawrence; opposition activist, Carol Joseph; Deputy Chief Elections Officer (DCEO), Roxanne Myers; the CEO’s clerks, Michelle Miller and Denise Bob-Cummings; Elections Officer, Shefern February and Information Technology Officer, Enrique Livan.
They are all accused of inflating the results for Region Four – Guyana’s largest voting district – to give the APNU+AFC Coalition a majority win at the March 2 polls, when in fact, the PPP/C had won by 15,000 more votes.
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