“I can no longer wait quietly and politely while our country gets hijacked, ridiculed and torn apart.”

Jun 20, 2020 News

---

– calls Lowenfield’s report ‘devious’

The Alliance for Change (AFC)’s Hans Dominic Gaskin made an extensive Facebook post yesterday, in which he condemned attempts by the APNU+AFC coalition to “hijack” the country.

“I can no longer wait quietly and politely,” he said, “while our country gets hijacked, ridiculed and torn apart.”
“It was never a valid assumption that, having won the 2015 elections by a slim majority, the APNU+AFC Coalition would easily win the 2020 elections. It was always going to be tough fight,” Gaskin said.
He stated that APNU+AFC has lost the faith of the swing voters who decided the last few general elections in Guyana. As for the Peoples National Congress (PNC), Gaskin said it “never commanded the electoral strength to win an election on its own,” and so the only reason it managed to win in 2015 was because of its alliance with AFC. And so, Gaskin said, it is entirely possible that the swing voters, who handed the coalition a victory in 2015, heaved their weight behind the PPP/C in 2020. Hence, he added, the results of the March 2 polls are “certainly plausible”.
Gaskin knew, he said, by March 4 that a coalition victory was unlikely when all electoral districts except Region Four were counted. Then, after seeing a considerable portion of Region Four counted, he knew that the coalition could not surmise the votes it needed in the remaining count, to win the election. That’s why he became “deeply suspicious” hearing the numbers that Returning Officer, Clairmont Mingo had declared.
Gaskin had spoken out in March against Mingo’s numbers, with his now infamous phrase “Who vex, vex!”
“There was no way his numbers could have been correct,” Gaskin, who is also David Granger’s son-in-law, said in his statement yesterday.

‘APNU+AFC misled its supporters’
He put on record that supporters of the APNU+AFC coalition were “misled into believing that the coalition had won the election.”
It started, to his disappointment, when the leadership of the APNU and the AFC both claimed that Mingo’s numbers and their statements of poll were consistent.
Despite their claims, an APNU+AFC candidate Ulita Moore had sought to prevent the National Recount. It was claimed that she was acting as a private citizen, but Gaskin acknowledged that it was APNU+AFC that “supported the court action to prevent a recount.”
Now that the recount has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that Mingo’s numbers were fraudulent, Gaskin said that the coalition’s supporters deserve an explanation from its leadership.

 

‘Deliberate attempt to discredit elections’
Gaskin also spoke about the coalition’s concerted attempt to discredit the elections. Kaieteur News has documented a long line of false claims and misinformation coming from elements of the coalition. It sought to have the country believe that procedural irregularities made the elections not credible. But Gaskin dismissed that.
“We live in an imperfect world,” he said, “and no electoral system, especially not one that relies on manual voting and counting, is foolproof or devoid of irregularities.”
“The nation put its faith in the CARICOM observer team, and held its breath for the duration of the recount, while being treated to a daily menu of ‘Breaking News’ of more and more discoveries of ‘Massive Fraud’ and ‘Systemic Rigging’.”
As for the claims of fraud, Gaskin pointed out that they were “grossly exaggerated” and designed to fool party supporters. Many of those supporters, after being misinformed by the coalition, still believe that the PPP/C has rigged the elections, even though no evidence has been put to the public.
“The claim that vast numbers of disciplined services ballots were deliberately not stamped, and therefore rejected, is a case in point. The so-called intermixing stations are known, and it is a fairly simple task to sum up all the unstamped rejected ballots in those stations to support the allegation. This, however, was not done and the ominous suggestion was left to torment the minds of the men and women responsible for the defence and protection of our country and its citizens.”
The coalition’s false claim about the disciplined services ballots, like many others, has been debunked by GECOM itself.

‘Lowenfield’s report devious’
In the end the CARICOM team delivered its report, endorsing the elections and the results of the recount, only to have it rejected by the Coalition in favour of a devious piece of reasoning by Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield.”
What Gaskin referred to as “devious” was the first report submitted by Lowenfield, in which he declared the elections not credible, and then attempted to revise the results of the recount by disenfranchising a majority of the voting electorate to give the coalition a victory with a margin of 68,000+ votes.
“To her credit,” Gaskin said, “the Chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission then issued very clear instructions to Mr. Lowenfield to submit a report for consideration by the Commission using the results of the recount. Needless to say, another move to the court has been made and this report, from which a final declaration should have resulted, will now have to await the outcome of yet another tedious challenge.”

‘Electorate did not elect coalition to hold office forever’
Gaskin said that the uncomfortable conclusion he has met is that the coalition does not intend to relinquish power.
“Five years after winning an election and gaining office with a fair amount of goodwill,” he said, “the coalition is saying to the people who put us there, the equivalent of ‘unless and until WE are satisfied beyond a shadow of a doubt that ‘more votes are cast’ in favour of another party in a an election that WE deem credible, WE ain going nowhere.’”
This condition, Gaskin said, will never be satisfied.
His advice is for the coalition to give up.
“No one elected us to remain in office forever.”
He said that there is no reasonable basis on which it can be claimed that the coalition got more votes than the PPP/C.
“Level with your supporters,” he said, “and start directing your energies towards becoming a credible opposition party in time for 2025. Above all, try to regain the trust of the swing voter. You will never win another election without their support.”

---

---