Dear Citizens of the Caribbean:
I HOLD Prime Minister Mia Mottley in high regard. Many other Guyanese did as well. I am disappointed in the misguided position she espoused on Guyana’s March 2, 2020 elections impasse. Without seizing herself of the full set of facts, Prime Minister Mottley, in her capacity as CARICOM Chairperson, jumped into Guyana’s electoral politics to support her friend Bharrat Jagdeo, leader of the opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP).
The Caribbean knows that Bharrat Jagdeo’s PPP is the most violently racist and brutally oppressive political party in the western hemisphere. The United Nations has accused Bharrat Jagdeo’s previous PPP government of being complicit in the extra-judicial killing of over 1400 African-Guyanese young men. There has been no justice.
Prime Minister Mottley viciously attacked Guyana’s Chief Elections Officer (CEO), Keith Lowenfield. His elections results report shows that Guyana’s ruling APNU+AFC coalition won the elections. Like Jagdeo, Ms. Mottley delivered remarks, penned in Georgetown and riddled with misinformation, which purported that the PPP won the elections. She recklessly called on the Guyana Elections Commission to declare the PPP the winner, although the Caribbean Court of Justice had already issued a restraining order against the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) prohibiting it from declaring the results.
The prime minister is dead wrong. Guyana’s chief elections officer doesn’t work for her. Her blatant disrespect crossed the line. Furthermore, she demonstrated contempt for the ruling of the Guyana Court of Appeal which directed GECOM to count only valid votes. More astonishingly, the prime minister violated the rules of judicial independence by commenting extensively on this matter which is sub judice at the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) – an organ of CARICOM of which she is chairperson.
This is repugnant to the principles of jurisprudence. Her uninformed comments manifest an improper attempt to influence the outcome of the matter before the CCJ. As an attorney-at-law, the prime minister knows fully well that her conduct was inappropriate, as it affects the appearance of impartiality and independence of the CCJ, which is an imperative for the administration of justice in any jurisdiction.
No objective person who arms his/herself with the facts will support Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s misguided position. These are the facts. Guyana’s opposition PPP is part of an international conspiracy with international actors, to force out the APNU+AFC coalition government to control Guyana’s oil and gas. The PPP is attempting to sneak into government through the back door with fraudulent ballots to re-establish an ethnocracy in Guyana to monopolise Guyana’s oil wealth.
The March 2, 2020 elections were plagued by fraud and voter impersonation. The police and Registrar of Deaths conducted separate investigations and confirmed, through immigration records and death certificates, that PPP operatives around Guyana voted for dead people and people who live abroad, whose names remain on the voters’ list. To cover up their fraud they destroyed statutory, elections documents required by law to authenticate each ballot.
The PPP and their international collaborators are trying to bully GECOM to conflate and count fraudulent ballots along with valid votes. There is a big difference between a valid ballot paper and a valid vote. A valid ballot paper can be fraudulently but correctly marked for a political party by someone who is impersonating a legitimate voter. However, a valid vote is a vote cast in person by an eligible voter, whose name appears on the voters’ list, after that voter properly identifies himself or herself with a valid photo ID as prescribed by law. The PPP’s vote total consists of thousands of fraudulent ballot papers, which were cast via voter impersonation and are therefore invalid votes.
The national ballot recount total shows that the PPP has 15,000 more votes than the ruling APNU+AFC coalition. However, the elections commission has verified that between 32,000 and 56,000 ballot papers marked for the PPP are actually fraudulent ballots that were obtained through voter impersonation — fraud. The Guyana Court of Appeal ruled on June 20, 2020, that only valid votes cast in the March 2, 2020 elections shall be counted. The Guyana constitution mandates that the Court of Appeal ruling is final. Notwithstanding the constitutional mandate as to the finality of ruling of the Guyana Court of Appeal, the PPP appealed the Court of Appeal’s decision, “that only valid votes must be counted,” to the CCJ.
The PPP is the only political party in the history of the world that is appealing a court order compelling that only valid votes must be counted in an election. The PPP is the only party in the world that is fighting to have dead people’s votes, as well as other fraudulent votes, counted. The Prime Minister of Barbados is supporting them in this “dead-man-voting-from-the-grave” initiative.
Every Guyanese and Caribbean citizen must reject this, and demand that only valid votes must be counted! Will Prime Minister Mottley allow fraudulent votes to be counted in a Barbados general election? I hope not! Under the previous PPP government, death squads killed over 1400 African-Guyanese. There has never been any investigation or justice for this genocide. Now the very people accused by the US and UN of being complicit in this genocide are attempting to get back into government through the back door, with fraudulent ballots to boot. It is this barefaced thievery and contumely that have outraged over half of the population of Guyana.
Former PPP Attorney General Anil Nandlall yesterday said if the PPP gets back into government certain people will have to leave the country. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what type of people the PPP will attempt to run out of our country. These are the people Ms. Mottley is advocating for. Moreover, she’s silent on their genocidal threats against certain people in Guyana. Our indomitable forefathers, slaves and indentured labourers bequeathed to us the will to resist oppressors and imperialists. We the people shall!
We must all join the relatives of these death squad victims and the people of the Caribbean to demand justice for these black lives that were murdered by death squads. Now the brutal oppressors are trying to regain power by fraudulent ballots. That will not happen. Prime Minister Mottley must advise her friends in the PPP to try to win an election freely and fairly, and that they will not be rewarded for casting fraudulent ballots.
Regards
Rickford Burke
President
Caribbean-Guyana Institute for Democracy
Source: https://issuu.com/guyanachroniclee-paper/docs/guyana_chronicle_epaper_28_05_2020