Georgetown: On Saturday, the Opposition, People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) was in a clear lead of 14,317 votes ahead of the incumbent, A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) which is an unassailable lead to victory for the opposition with 73 ballot boxes remaining to be counted on Sunday.
The remaining ballot boxes are from the East Coast of Demerara in villages identified as historically being the PPP/C strongholds.
Verifiable reporting and analysis of the Region Four tabulation has proven that the declaration produced by Returning Officer, Clairmont Mingo was manipulated in favour of the governing Coalition.
The figures emerging from the recount have vindicated the statements of poll published by the PPP/C and, in so doing, have proven that the Region Four tabulation was rigged.
The currently tabulated Region Four boxes show an average of 227 valid votes per ballot box.
Even if the Coalition won all of these votes, with no gain for the PPP/C, it would still be thousands of votes short of the 236,990 votes made up, in part, by Mingo’s fraudulent declaration. The Opposition Party is expected to gain a majority of the remaining votes.
Since Mingo produced a General Election declaration of the Region Four tabulation on March 13, the Coalition had maintained that those 10 General Election declarations showed it to have won a free, fair and credible election.
However, most of the other political parties and all international observers determined the Region Four tabulation to be fraudulent as Mingo, in their view, presented clearly fabricated numbers meant to favour the Coalition and secure its victory.
Consequently, GECOM decided to conduct a recount of all votes, agreed to by President David Granger and Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo. Though it faced several hurdles, the recount kicked off and just as it started, the Coalition walked back on its determination that the Elections were credible and started to raise a series of objections.
The Opposition accused the Coalition of trying to have GECOM annul the Elections, as it knew that a credible recount would expose its loss and the rigging of the Region Four tabulation. Pursuant to this purported goal, the Coalition is accused of embarking on a campaign of misinformation, making claims of electoral fraud against the PPP/C.
Many of its claims, which were mostly based on allegations about dead and migrant voters, were proven to be false. Nevertheless, GECOM’s Chair, Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh informed the Commission that she would conduct an investigation of some of the claims.
The Coalition is now maintaining that electoral fraud occurred, and that the numerical results of the recount cannot be considered credible. Despite this claim, two international observers, the Organization of American States (OAS) and the European Union (EU) have determined the electoral process to have been credible, except for the Region Four tabulation.
The American, British, Canadian and European diplomats have reminded Guyana’s political leaders of their commitment to the recount, and have urged them to accept its results.
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