…PM Nagamootoo accuses opposition of devious tactics to return to power
GUYANESE, according to Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo, have been the victims of voter manipulation at the hands of the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C), in its quest to return to power at time when Guyana is on the verge of becoming one of the world’s leading oil producing countries.
In levying the allegation against the PPP/C, the Prime Minister said the party should not be allowed to thwart the will of the people. Prime Minister Nagamootoo made the allegations against the PPP/C during his appearance on WINNFM.COM – St Kitts and Nevis’ leading radio and internet station. In support of his position, the Prime Minister pointed to the hiring of Cambridge Analytica in 2013 and Mercury Public Affairs in 2019 by the PPP/C. At the cost of US$420,000 or GUY$80M, Cambridge Analytica was contracted by the PPP/C, under the Donald Ramotar Administration, to control the course of elections in its favour.
Cambridge Analytica is a data marketing firm that uses data to change audience behaviour. It has been exposed internationally for its practices of data harvesting from tens of millions of Facebook users — in some cases, private messages. The data is then used to identify target voter groups with designed targeted messages to influence opinion. Mercury Public Affairs is no different. The American firm was embroiled in the probe into alleged Russian interference in U.S. elections, and was contracted by the General Secretary of the PPP/C, Bharrat Jagdeo.
“Together, they have been able to do a violent intrusion into the privacy of the Guyanese and to use their personal data for voter manipulation,” Prime Minister Nagamootooo said while noting that the PPP/C has doled out millions of dollars to Cambridge Analytica and Mercury Public Affairs in a ‘violent’ assault on Guyana’s democracy.
In June 2020, Brittany Kaiser, of Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower, had attest to the use of data to manipulate the outcome of Guyana’s elections.
“They conducted the type of political research that I talked to you about earlier, they did a behavioural poll and what they call a Target Audience Analysis (TAA) and that is large scale national research where they would have done those qualitative focus groups and then quantitative surveys in order to understand as much as possible from the population. From their politics to their culture to their affiliations, the way that they do their decision making…and that allowed them to go about an entire elections strategy based on what they found out from that research,” Kaiser said.
She disclosed that the PPP/C used the information for its advertisement and communication strategies and had a satellite team both in-country and internationally from the London Headquarters. She said: “Not all countries actually allow political support from abroad or even political support from foreigners so it’s usually a satellite team that can be hidden in-country and is not obvious to the opposition that foreign assistance is active.”
ELECTORAL FRAUD
And when the PPP/C lost the Elections in 2015, it turned to Mercury Public Affairs in March 2019 ahead of the elections. Prime Minister Nagamootoo said while the March 2020 General and Regional Elections appeared “free and fair” at a glance, the 33 day-national recount, which was agreed to by President David Granger and the Leader of the Opposition, Bharrat Jagdeo, unearthed the massive electoral fraud which had taken place on March 2.
Prime Minister Nagamootoo said not only were there cases of voter impersonation – dead and migrant voters, but hundreds of boxes turned up without statutory documents. In fact, the Chief Elections Officer (CEO), Keith Lowenfield, in his report on the national recount, indicated that the elections were not credible due to 4,864 cases of voter impersonation and more than 2,000 anomalies. Approximately 47 ballot boxes from the East Coast of Demerara, District Four, had only ballots inside, and were therefore void of statutory documents such as the official lists of elections, certificates of employment, oaths of identity and counterfoils among others.
Prime Minister Nagamootoo clarified that while the CEO submitted a report on the tabulation of votes cast together with observation reports from the 10 Electoral Districts based on the national recount – the report consisted of “raw data” inclusive of votes affected by the thousands of anomalies and cases of voter impersonation.
He said it was expected that, in keeping with the Order, which triggered the national recount, that the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) would have considered the raw data (votes) together with the observation reports before arriving at a decision. However, without determining “a final credible count” as provided for in the Order, the CEO was ordered by the Elections Commission to prepare an elections report based on the votes tabulated during the recount. That tabulation, which was done at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC), showed that the PPP/C won the elections by 15,000 votes.
However, just as the CEO was preparing to submit his report, a North Sophia Resident, Eslyn David, challenged the decision of the Elections Commission at the level of the Court of Appeal, and in doing so, requested an interpretation of Article 177 (2) (b) of the Constitution.
The Appellate Court subsequently ruled that the election of a President must be based on “valid votes” in accordance with Article 177 (2) (b) and Order No. 60. In keeping with this decision, the CEO submitted his elections report, which showed that the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) won the General and Regional Elections when the valid votes were considered. Based on the CEO’s Elections Report, it would appear that over 100,000 votes had been compromised as a result of anomalies and voter impersonation, and were therefore not included.
“If the Elections Commission considers the report from the Chief Elections Officer, they could swear in the incumbent president, and then the matter could go to court, so that the court could decide that whether the process was so tainted, that you need to have new elections in Guyana. So, yes we believe that every vote counts, but it should be a valid vote, part of a credible electoral process,” Prime Minister Nagamootoo said.
But the Chief Elections Officer has come in for major criticism. While his reports speak to widespread electoral fraud, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Observation Team, after observing 18 per cent of the 2,339 ballot boxes, had concluded that the elections were “reasonably credible” though noting that the country went into the elections with a bloated Official List of Electors, and a number of defects inclusive of missing statutory documents were detected. But Prime Minister Nagamootoo said “reasonably credible” is simply not good enough.
“You can’t be half way free and half way slaved. You can’t be fair and half way unfair; and these elections must not only be judged on valid votes, but by a process that has been credible. Thus, the ruling of the Court of Appeal is that the votes cast, they cannot simply be votes, they have to be valid votes, and those valid votes have to meet the credibility test,” the Prime Minister said. But the Organisation of American States (OAS), the Commonwealth, and the ABCE countries, in backing the CARICOM Report, have been increasingly calling for a swift transition in governments on the basis that, according to the national recount, the PPP/C won the elections. In response, Prime Minister Nagamootoo said it is time for international interference in Guyana’s electoral process come to an end.
“We are a sovereign state, sovereignty belongs to the people, and the people who are the sovereign, should be allowed to choose the government, the parties of their choice free from outside interference, and outside manipulation,” Prime Minister Nagamootoo said, noting that situation has become toxic as a result of cyber intrusion and digital interference.
Guyana, in the eyes of some countries, is simply collateral damage, in their quest to pursue their geopolitical interests, the Prime Minister contended. “So when we were approached that we should support the opposition as president of the Republic of Venezuela, we were not inclined to intervene. When we were asked to set up a Spanish speaking radio station in Guyana to broadcast to the people of Venezuela, we didn’t agree to that. So we maintained our independence, we maintained our sovereignty, we maintained the national interest, and so there are some geopolitical reasons why some would say that they want a regime change in Guyana,” Prime Minister reasoned.
He added: “And so if you have some people in the opposition who sell out to that agenda, so then you can have all the parties appear to be on one side, advocating the change, and they come down on you like a pack of vultures, manipulate the agenda, manipulate the way people think, manipulate even the fears of people by threatening sanctions…” Guyana, he posited, must take tough measures to guard itself against outside interference in the future.
Source: https://issuu.com/guyanachroniclee-paper/docs/guyana_chronicle_epaper_28_05_2020