What is sauce for the goose…
The effect of the campaign by the People’s Progressive Party has led to the situation where every fraudulent activity by that party has been ignored.
During the recount, agents for the Coalition documented numerous cases of dead people voting. They also documented hundreds more cases of people who migrated and were not in Guyana, voting on March 2, 2020.
In the face of these discoveries the tone from the parties and critics aligned against the government is that these cases as unsubstantiated.
Sir Ronald Sanders, in his weekly syndicated column wrote, “As the recounted votes show that APNU-AFC has clearly lost the elections, its officials are reported to be demanding that the entire general election should be voided.
“The basis for this alarming demand is an unsubstantiated allegation that dead or absent persons voted in the election. Curiously, this ominous statement has come after the APNU-AFC leadership had earlier declared – along with all the observer missions – that the voting, at which every party had agents present, was free and fair.”
But the Coalition has supplied the Guyana Elections Commission with hundreds of death certificates and the matching information from the poll books. These are being investigated by the Commission.
In like vein, the coalition has also submitted the immigration records of those people who purportedthat ly voted on March 2, 2020 while remaining overseas.
Some people came forward to say that they were in Guyana on Election Day and that their names were wrongly placed on the immigration lists. However, none of these persons have approached the Immigration Department to remove the misinformation.
At the same time the diplomatic community has said nothing about the fraud uncovered by the coalition. The statement that sanctions would befall any government sworn in as a result of elections that are not credible should hold true at this time because, according to the coalition, the results of these elections cannot be deemed credible.
GECOM counted ballot boxes in which there was nothing but the ballots cast. There were no accompanying documentation that could have been used to verify these ballots. But GECOM accepted the count and the People’s Progressive Party was all too happy to accept the votes.
The decision by GECOM was based on the argument that no voter should be disenfranchised. However, the coalition has argued that many voters were disenfranchised by the very GECOM. There were the unstamped ballots by the Disciplined Services and some voters in Sophia.
Evidence of fraud was supplied. Had the shoe been on the other foot, one coalition spokesperson said, the noise would not have abated. And the international community would have once more been vocal.
Sanders wrote, “The three main organisations in which Guyana advances its interests are CARICOM, the Commonwealth and the Organization of American States. Each of them demands, in their charters and other declarations, the requirement for their member states to adhere to democracy and the rule of law.
“Guyana is also a signatory to an Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union under which it is committed to human rights and democracy.
“The installation of an unlawful government would trigger actions against Guyana in which the people would suffer for the actions of a few.
“Powerful countries of the world will also target them and their families with sanctions for their violations of human, civil and political rights.”
Guyana is no stranger to sanctions at the whims of the major countries. Sanctions prevented Guyana from completing the Upper Mazaruni Hydropower Project.
The Jagdeo Government was also sanctioned when it failed to accept Guyanese being deported from the United States. Government employees were denied visas to the United States. These sanctions have been forgotten. Instead people now look at the threat of sanctions as though it is a death sentence.
