The sooner the Coalition starts to reveal the extent of systematic cheating the better

May 17, 2020 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

The sooner the Coalition decides to start letting the public know about the extent of systematic cheating by the opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP) in the March 2 General and Regional elections would be the better, as the PPP has been on the rampage with its propaganda.
Coalition representatives monitoring the recount and auditing process are coming across an increasing number of dead and or migrated people who miraculously were able to vote by remote from their overseas bases or were able to temporarily rise from their graves, entered the polling booths and voted PPP countrywide.
So it was no surprise that the Coalition is planning to ask GECOM about how it would handle the numerous instances of fake, fraudulent or irregular votes that happened to make their way into the ballot boxes, only in the PPP’s traditional strongholds.
“We are going to ask GECOM how they intend to treat with all the issues we have brought up, all the issues that are recorded every single day- observation reports, statistical anomalies,” Patterson told reporters.
The Coalition needs to begin taking the public into its confidence and to give a detailed summary of what has transpired so far. Senior executives like Patterson and Leonard Craig have both given signals that the Coalition is headed in this direction as they need to counter the PPP’s relentless propaganda machine. They need to do so quickly.
Craig noted that PPP agents, for very obvious transparency reasons, continue to resist efforts to properly scrutinize ballots retrieved from boxes and the subsequent examination of the steps that led to voting in a particular way, for a particular party, in particular strongholds.
“Right now PPP/C agents are advocating for a reduction of scrutiny, right down to the authenticity of every ballot. The APNU+AFC is not in agreement with such a decision and we will strenuously oppose that decision. We want full scrutiny of every single ballot, documents in every ballot box. PPP/C is even asking that some envelopes not be opened. We cannot afford to cut corners to save time. We are not opposing a more rapid count, but we cannot sacrifice thoroughness for speed. And if we want to have a result that is credible, let us take the time to go through every piece of document. People are saying we are making objections, the word objections is ill-placed. We are making observations. That is the reason for the observation reports, and we have the evidence to attest.”
We are also hearing that the PPP is planning to abandon the entire recounting and auditing exercise once the majority of boxes in Region Four are completed. We can all recall that the PPP’s commissioners, its surrogate organizations like the Private Sector Commission and others, had been fighting tooth and nail, advocating for a recount only of District Four. The plan was plain as a sunny day to see as it was preparing to walk away, declare victory and claim the right to form the next government. Its agents know what the party has done to rig these elections as it no longer has the numbers to dominate polls in Guyana anymore.
While the Coalition will soon publish some of the names of the dead and migrated voters who just happen to love the PPP and found a way to be in Guyana to vote, Patterson and Craig said GECOM would soon have to give guidance on the way forward.
“Like we have always said that we will produce it. If you want immigration records then it will be produced. That is from research that we have done. We have agents in every village and in every town in Guyana. We do not capture all but we believe the ones that we investigated are true and correct. A lot of the people who live in communities have local knowledge of, you know, what is happening and basically, that is the foundation for determining some of these things,” said Craig.
We have also seen numbers adjusted for various parties in the recount but as the exercise heads to places like Region Six and Nine where the PPP’s electoral and political skullduggery are well known, an even clear picture about the systematic rigging will emerge.
As the counting and auditing continue, the seven commissioners will have a battle on their hands as to how to declare the 2020 General and Regional Elections as credible. All must remember that no one had disputed that polling day went largely smoothly. The main cry from the opposition, its friends in the west, the private sector and other groups is about the credibility of the elections and that alone. But based on what is emerging-the systematic padding of boxes with dead and migrated voters- would in fact present GECOM with a major headache to declare this year’s elections as a credible one.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)