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Reject claims of unstamped Joint Services ballots – ANUG urges

May 31, 2020 News

Timothy Jonas, Chairman of A New And United Guyana (ANUG), yesterday called on the Joint Forces to reject claims being made by the APNU+AFC Coalition that a vast majority of the 8,000 votes cast by those in the Joint Forces were deemed void because they did not carry the six digit stamp of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM).
Jonas, whose party contested the elections for the first time on March 2nd, referenced a letter in one of the dailies, sent by President of the Guyana Veterans, Lt. Col. George Gomes who alleged that the ballots cast by the Disciplined Services were not counted in the ongoing National Recount because they “were unstamped”.
To this, the ANUG Chair told the media that there is no evidence to substantiate the claims being made and that they must be “rejected and condemned.”
He opined that the letter contained falsities and that “it was incendiary- it was designed to insight fear, distrust and to aggravate a section of society.”
Jonas explained that of the total 286,000 ballots recounted up to Friday evening, only 2,600 ballots were rejected, accounting for less than 1% of the votes cast on March 2nd.
This, he noted, were for varying reasons other than them not carrying the six-digit stamp.
“Now, from my time counting in there, there are many more instances where you are seeing two Xs, some people got Xs along all the party names or no Xs at all or you cannot identify from the location of the X who the person intended to vote for. There are many more ballots rejected for that reason, many more than because there was no stamp so of the 2,600 rejected ballots, only a small fraction is rejected because there is no stamp,” he told the media.
The ANUG Chair added that there is no way to identify the ballots of the Joint Forces after they are intermixed on elections day.
If such a situation were to occur, Jonas pointed out, it would be “an enormous issue”, one that is also logistically impossible.
“If you pretend that 8,000 votes have been rejected,” he said “because there is no stamp and the system is these ballots are intermingled, then you are saying that 200 places of poll had a corrupt group of people; APNU, PPP, GECOM and observers, who saw these ballot come in and are thrown into the box without being stamped.”
Additionally, he called on the Joint Services to examine the facts and reject the claims being made.
“We are giving incendiary false information to the Joint Services and if I was a member of the Joint Services and I saw that, I would be riled up. I would be angry so I want to say to the Joint Service that this is not true; look at the facts, look at what has come out so far,” he said.
“It is not even a spin that makes any sense. It is just an outright lie.”
Similar sentiments were shared by PPP Prime Ministerial Candidate, Brigadier (ret’d) Mark Phillips, who told the press that as a former army man, he would “like to know that the Discipline Services votes are counted.”
Phillips noted that it is the responsibility of GECOM to discredit the allegations made.

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