Improbable for Coalition to catch up

Jun 07, 2020 News

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The tabulation of votes at the National Recount to date, shows a clear lead for the Opposition, People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) of 14,317 votes ahead of the incumbent, A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC).

While the Coalition could technically retake the lead, it would take a strong upset in the remaining recount and tabulation since the remaining ballot boxes are from the East Coast of Demerara, a historical stronghold of the PPP/C.
Kaieteur News did the calculations on the votes counted thus far – here is the math. With 2,236 boxes tabulated, the Coalition has so far secured 205,756 valid votes, behind the PPP/C’s 220,073 votes. To put this into perspective, the current 10 general election declarations, held in abeyance by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) gave the Coalition 236,990 votes ahead of the PPP/C’s 229,489 votes.
However, Kaieteur News’ 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. This newspaper’s reporting on figures from 32 Region Four ballot boxes has exposed a trend of inflation of votes for the Coalition, and a trend of deflation of votes for the PPP/C, when compared to the PPP/C’s statements of poll.
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, which would amount to a projected 23,381 valid votes left, if the 103 remaining boxes continue with this trend.
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.
Assuming that the smaller parties gain the same collective proportion of votes for the remaining boxes, they will leave the Coalition and the PPP/C to battle over 22,246 votes. In order for the Coalition to regain a lead of two votes, it would have to get 80.6 percent of what remains, or 18,850 of 22,246 votes.
This is highly unlikely, as the East Coast of Demerara has historically generally voted in favour of the PPP/C. 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.
Opposition parties have argued that it is not GECOM’s place to conduct any investigation of the lawfulness of the election process, and that those matters are meant to be handled by the Court in an elections petition.
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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