Georgetown: Chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission, (GECOM) Justice Claudette Singh is of the view that the elections body’s current role is not that to investigate the validity of the anomalies claimed in the recount observation statements, but a case more suited for an elections petition, according to opposition nominated Commissioner Sase Gunraj.
Gunraj noted that the seven member commission has made no official decision to investigate the anomalies the ANPU/AFC coalition claims were unearthing in the recount process.
Opposition nominated Commissioners also shares the view the recount in essence are focused on the numbers and a winner of the elections while any claims of anomalies are for an elections petition that will be dealt with in court.
Meanwhile, government nominated Commissioner, Vincent Alexander said that the Secretariat is actively summing up a report of all of the observation statements for the completed districts, Regions One and Two.
Alexander and colleague Commissioner Desmond Trotman are of the opinion that GECOM should probe the claims.
APNU/AFC in a recent press statement said that through the work of its agents at the recount exercise, “clear and unmistakable patterns of irregularities, discrepancies and worse have emerged.”
In qualifying its pronouncement, the coalition cited as an example, “countless instances of dead persons being recorded as voting exclusively in PPP strongholds; Countless instances of persons who have long migrated from Guyana and who were not in Guyana on Election Day being recorded as voting.”
Additionally, the coalition made claims ranging from “countless instances of persons who did not uplift their ID cards from GECOM for many years being recorded as voting in PPP stronghold areas but with no corresponding Oaths of Identity being found in the ballot boxes” to “Countless instances of unsigned Oaths of Identity in PPP stronghold areas.”
However, Former Attorney General Anil Nandlall in debunking the allegations said, “it is clear that APNU/AFC, they have an agenda to derail the process.”
According to the PPP recount agent present at ACCC, now that the ballot boxes are being opened “they are realising that the Statements of Recount are matching with Statement of Polls [from Elections Day] and that is consistent with the number of ballots in the boxes; they are realising that their lie that they won the election is being unravelled and uncovered.”
He was at the time referencing initial claims by the APNU/AFC—including in a dossier it submitted to the international community—that it had won the March 2 General and Regional Elections and that the polls had been free, fair and credible.
Citing examples qualifying his party’s position, Nandlall pointed to instances where agents had been making objections in relation to names on the list of electors only to find out that the names being referenced are for persons that did not even vote.
Additionally, he noted, coalition agents refusing to comply with GECOM’s orders to continue opening ballot boxes at 17:00h.
According to Nandlall, APNU/AFC agents on Monday, as they did on the previous day, refused to turn over their party keys to have the containers opened.
GECOM had cut open the containers in order to access the ballot boxes and have the count continue.
Nandlall’s claims were also corroborated by other party agents in various social media posts denouncing the refusal of the APNU/AFC agents to turn over the keys.
He was adamant that the actions on the part of the agents of the APNU/AFC continue to consume time which should instead be used recounting the ballots cast.
As such, Nandlall posited, “they have an orchestrated plan, that at the end of the day, they will accumulate all these, what they are calling irregularities, and they will use that as a basis not to accept the outcome of the results here.”
President David Granger and Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo had in March agreed to a national recount after local and international observers had expressed grave concern about the tabulation of results for Region Four.
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