…GECOM Chair tells Jagdeo as he asked for resumption of verification process
GENERAL Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C), Bharrat Jagdeo, is maintaining that his party has beaten the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) by over 15,000 votes.
He wrote the Chair of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh, on Saturday in a three-page letter claiming the same, but the Chair, in a brief letter on Sunday, asked the opposition leader to await ongoing the ruling of the High Court which speaks to the declarations of Region Four.
According to the opposition leader and based on tabulations from his own party, the PPP gained 223,193 votes altogether, while the APNU+AFC gained 217,305 in the Regional Elections. He claimed that the commission had previously published on its site the results of nine regions which showed that the APNU+AFC received 100,682 votes and the PPP/C 152,121.
However, this newspaper can confirm that the commission’s site showed that these numbers are actually 100,685 votes for APNU+AFC and 152,304 for the PPP/C for the nine regions. Jagdeo based the previous numbers on a table with discrepancies which has been floating around social media and failed to tally each regional declaration by GECOM to verify his information.
Nonetheless, despite these errors, Jagdeo stated in his letter that the verification process commenced by Region Four RO, Clairmont Mingo, was interrupted on March 4, 2020 by his illness and the subsequent exhaustion or unavailability of elections officials. He also claimed that on one occasion the verification process was interrupted by “the need to locate 20 Statements of Poll in relation to certain voters which had been recorded on a spreadsheet produced by the Returning Officer.”
He said that they were different from what counting agents had in their possession and this resulted in the votes of only 421 of the 879 stations in the district being counted. The next day, on March 5, 2020, when the stakeholders were slated to return to continue the process, he said that Mingo, “in the presence of counting agents, their assistants and other observers” without resuming the verification process, made a declaration.
“At around 2pm, Mr. Mingo appeared on the balcony of third floor of the GECOM building and made an announcement which could not be heard over the objections of those present and has since not been reported,” he said. Jagdeo also said that the declaration form appearing on social media bears no official stamp. On Sunday, the PPP/C used its Facebook page to conjecture that the signature was that of Minister of Health, Volda Lawrence.
Even though the matter to block the declaration of the results for the 2020 General and Regional Elections until the Region Four votes are completely verified is before the High Court, the former PPP/C President called on the GECOM Chair to “resume the verification process voluntarily” and demanded a final count.
In her response, Singh duly noted Jagdeo’s position but stated: “However, since this matter is now sub judice, I will await the decision of the court to determine the commission’s next step.” Added to this, she noted that none of the attachments, which Jagdeo claimed in his letter were included in his email, had been in her receipt in the said email. The Chair therefore stated: “I request you submit the same for the commission’s perusal.”
Source: https://issuu.com/guyanachroniclee-paper/docs/guyana_chronicle_e-paper_3-9-2020