The recount of ballots cast on March 2, 2020 ended on Sunday. The final figures, fraudulent votes and all, showed that the People’s Progressive Party/ Civic secured a 13,000 vote lead over the coalition APNU+AFC.
This represents the first stage of the recount but sections of the media and the PPP/C have decided that this is the final outcome of the recount.
The Guyana Elections Commission had said that the recount is a four-stage process. This was repeated by President David Granger in his address to the nation on Saturday.
The second stage involves investigating he ballots cast and counted. During the recount the agents for the coalition noted a number of anomalies to the point that officials contended that there were deliberate attempts at fraud.
These anomalies and irregularities were noted on the Observation List which accompanied the ballot boxes. These ranged from unstamped ballots for the Discipline Services, to registered voters who were not in the jurisdiction actually voting on March 2; dead people voting; missing poll boxes and at times in the strongholds of the PPP there were no documents in the boxes sav
e for the actual ballots.
On Friday, presented with 29 ballot boxes with no electoral documents, GECOM ordered that these boxes be set aside. On Saturday, after meeting with the commissioners, Chairperson Justice Claudette Singh, ruled that the votes should be counted.
Her contention was that no one should be disenfranchised.
However, a similar vote was not taken when evidence surfaced that failure to stamp ballots cast by the Discipline Services led to a large number of these not being counted.
And despite warnings that only GECOM has the power to declare a winner of the polls, the PPP went into full celebratory mode. Presidential candidate Irfaan Ali, Party Leader Bharrat Jagdeo and others proclaimed victor.
A similar position was adopted by sections of the media. One newspaper even posted seat allocations in the National Assembly although it suggested that the seat allocation was unofficial.
And at this time, in the face of electoral fraud by the PPP, the diplomatic community and the international observers are very silent.
They were threatening and very vocal when the PPP reported that the Region Four count was fraudulent. They pressured GECOM to suspend the count, reverse the declaration and conduct the recount.
Coalition agents and commissioners feel that the diplomatic community and the international community were arrayed against the Coalition. Their silence at this time reinforces the view.
