…as recount exercise exposes discrepancies
— edits made on March 7, 2020
— total tabulation removed
THE People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) has modified its Statements of Poll (SOPs), one day after the commencement of the national recount process, sparking much discussion on social media.
Shortly after the breakdown in the tabulation of Region Four SOPs by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) in early March 2020, the PPP/C created the website (https://region4sopsinformation.com/) where it uploaded SOPs gathered by its party from the 2020 General and Regional Elections. The site featured the complete tabulation of Region Four SOPs collected by the party but they differed from total tabulation then presented by GECOM. GECOM’s figures showed that the coalition won the elections.
However, PPP/C Executives have maintained that their SOPs are credible and claimed that GECOM staff had tampered with the results on their end.
Refusal to accept otherwise, along with the process used to tabulate the Region’s vote at the Region Four Tabulation Centre, led to string of court battles and the current national recount. However, two months have passed since March and the party found no reason to modify the SOPs information on its site until May 7, 2020, just one day after the recount had started.
Examine the party’s website ‘Index of SOPs’ (https://region4sopsinformation.com/SOPS/) and one would see that data for the East Bank, East Coast of Demerara, North Georgetown and South Georgetown were edited on 2020-05-07, late at night, around 23:00hours.
Open each location individually and one will see that while the scanned copies of SOPs they presented for ballot boxes were last edited on 2020-03-05, the total tabulation for the said locations were each edited on 2020-05-07 near midnight.
This was not the only change made to the site on May 7, 2020. The majority of media entities in Guyana all published reports when the PPP/C first launched the site and shared snap shots in their publications of a table showing the total Region Four SOPs — as calculated by the party — which it proudly brandished at the very top of the site’s home page. However, as of day one into the recount, this information has been pulled from the website and replaced by a banner of the party’s logo. It is unknow why the PPP/C would no longer want this information public having defended it in the past.
Raising eyebrows
Either way, the editing of the website has sparked social media discussions because before it took place, earlier on that same day, the APNU/AFC had put forward evidence showing that information from the recount process largely differed from one of the SOPs on the PPP/C’s website. The recount, being conducted at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC), shows that in ballot box #4014 Yarrowkabra Primary School, the APNU+AFC received 160 votes and the PPP, 63. Immediately after, the APNU/AFC stated that it sourced the PPP/C’s information provided back in March to compare, and found that, for the said box, the PPP/C’s tabulation showed 59 for itself and 41 for APNU/AFC. Hours later, seeking to check for themselves, persons on social media shared screen shots showing that the PPP/C website was down depicting ‘Error 1020’ and ‘Access Denied’ when attempts to access were made.
Sometime after, the site returned but with changes made with regards to the banner and edits made to the individual locations in Region Four edited at 2020-05-07 near midnight.
One of the edited documents, in which the said ballot box information is located, presently matches the most recent information coming out of the national recount. The PPP/C has not yet cleared up whether it did indeed edit previous information to match the recount data but, even so, the question as to why any edit to the site in any form were necessary months later remains unanswered.
Source: https://issuu.com/guyanachroniclee-paper/docs/guyana_chronicle_epaper_09_05_2020