Disciplined Services must not be misled, their votes have counted

Dear Editor,

By 4th March, 2020, APNU intimated that they had won the election. Granger, Williams, Patterson, Ramjattan, Hughes and many other party officials declared that the election

had been conduction fairly and credibly, and that the count done at the places of poll had been properly done, and that the SOP’s reflected an APNU victory, and that the assessment of the SOP’s by Mingo was accurate. They claimed victory. noted, local people are not perceived as independent; they belong to one side or the other, depending on what they are saying at any given point in time.)

The first attempt was made by Foreign Minister Karen Cummings, who improperly suggested the observers could lose their accreditation. Inevitably, that backfired, and thereafter letters in the press argued that they were interfering in Guyana’s internal affairs, an allegation which became more marked in relation to the Western heads of mission here and their host governments, who had endorsed the observers’ reports. This was particularly pronounced after these nations threatened sanctions if a president was sworn in on the basis of flawed results.

Then, of course, there was the matter of Mr Bruce Golding, who as head of the OAS mission gave a damming report to the members of that organization about the fraud in Region Four. Mr Joseph Harmon, in his customarily crude way, did not address the substantive issues in the report; Guyana-style he simply wrote off Mr Golding as a friend of Mr Jagdeo, thereby telling party supporters that ipso facto the mission head was not being truthful about events. That the PPP’s account of events and tally of the SoPs in its possession correspond for the most part to the facts, will mean nothing to a PNC constituent who has been told otherwise by his or her leaders.

The coalition is claiming there is a disputed election. There is no disputed election. What we have is a poll whose outcome would be unquestionable if the Region Four votes were tabulated in a straightforward way according to the law. And this could have been done not more than two or three days after the poll had the process not been artificially interrupted.

But now a completely contrived set of facts has been assembled that apart from belonging in a fantasy world lacks even internal coherence or consistency. There is no genuine dispute about the evidence in support of the facts, since the evidence is already clear, and APNU+AFC declines to back up its claims of having won by refusing to produce the SoPs in its own possession, among other things which could lend credence to its claims. The least that can be said is that this must be the most complicated assemblage of fake facts in the history of elections anywhere.

Other bodies have been pressed into service in the construction of this replacement data, although not all of them, the courts being a case in point, have proved as compliant as the coalition would like. It says a great deal for the integrity of some of our justices. Nevertheless, in spinning out this imaginary story delay was essential, and the Covid19 Task Force has been very helpful in this regard, since with Mr Harmon as its head – and even before − it has operated in a plainly political capacity rather than a health one. It has used the coronavirus as the excuse to limit the hours of those engaged in the recount; to restrict the number of workstations initially to ten, then under pressure to allow two more; and with the 25-day deadline almost reached, refusing permission for a further two.

Significantly, Covid-19 is also cited as a main reason for the denial of a permit to observers from the Carter Center to watch the recount, although

Importantly, although the PPP published their SOP’s to show this lie, APNU refused to do so, and Mingo and GECOM refused to do so. A secret victory.

Now that the recount is in workers for ExxonMobil have been allowed to fly in and out. Restricting the scrutiny of objective eyes is clearly the aim here.

But at the centre of it all sits Gecom, with various members of the Secretariat under Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield playing a critical role in fashioning fantasy facts and delaying processes in order to set them up. At the apex is the commission itself, with three commissioners allied to the coalition, and three to the opposition. The one holding the balance of power, therefore, is Chair Claudette Singh, who is the last person with the potential in the system to come down on the side of the real facts. Unfortunately, her record in this regard has not been above reproach.

We are now into what an exhausted population hopes is the final phase of the recount, and with the original 25-day timeline expiring on May 30th the commission on Friday decided to extend the deadline to June 13th. In addition the Chair commendably lent her casting vote to allow for a maximum of three days after the receipt of a final report from the CEO for the declaration of a result.

Theoretically, therefore, we could see an end to the election saga on June 16th. However, Justice Singh has a few votes yet to go before that could be regarded as any kind of certainty, more especially as there are lacunae in the amended order which could facilitate further delays. One of these is the fact that no time limit is given for Gecom to consider the CEO’s first report on the basis of which it decides whether to ask him to draw up the final one, and similarly no time limit is given on how long it should take him to present the final report. Given what has happened, none of this sounds very promising.

There had been considerable disagreement the day before about the length of time which should be devoted to consideration of the observation reports, most of which consist of innumerable allegations from the coalition about irregularities during the vote. It is on these which that party is hinging its latest story of a fraudulent election which it says was perpetrated by the PPP.

On Friday Commissioner Mr Vincent Alexander told the media that the commission had taken steps to investigate at least some of the claims made by the coalition. However, it has been denied by the opposition that any such decision has been taken at the commission level, and the secretariat should not be doing so without the former’s authorisation. The PPP/C’s Mr Anil Nandlall has now called on Justice Singh to publicly state her position on an ‘investigation’ into the allegations made by the coalition.

There are two issues: one is the validity of supposed ‘irregularities’ raised by APNU+AFC, and the other is whether Gecom should be investigating them. As it is the first comes under the rubric of fake facts, and the second relates to the matter of whether under the Order or the law the commission can conduct investigations let alone nullify an election. Expert legal opinion is that it can’t. What the Chair has to say and how she may later use her vote will be critical.

At the moment, while everyone hopes that this endless process will have an end and that President Granger will accept the result of the recount, rational citizens will feel justifiably nervous that this counter-factual story may still have some way to run.

progress, and new SOR’s are being prepared, APNU is no longer claiming that they won, or that the SOP’s reflect an APNU victory. They are noticeably silent on the now invisible Mingo.

Now, their position is that the SOP’s and SOR’s cannot be relied upon, because so many irregularities took place on election day. APNU have created three spectres. First, they say that dead people voted. Then, they say that overseas residents voted. And finally, they say that the members of the Disciplined Services have been disenfranchised by an internal GECOM conspiracy not to stamp their ballots so that those ballots will be rejected.

It is this latter myth that I wish to expose. I am prompted by a Letter to the Editor from Lt-Col. (Rtd) George Gomes in yesterday’s SN “crying out loud against the effort by the PPP to have GECOM not count their votes… because they are unstamped.” That trained army officer asserts that “PPP agents did not stamp the Disciplined Services ballots, as they were required to, after these ballots were taken to specific polling stations in the Regions on Elections Day. That over eight thousand (8,000) Disciplined Services votes were not stamped in the PPP strongholds in Districts 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6, is not accidental or coincidental. This was a deliberate large-scale rigging attempt by the PPP.”

The Disciplined Services (DS) voted before E-Day, and their ballots were intermingled into the ballot boxes on E-day by Gecom officials. Batches of between thirty and forty such ballots are distributed, and the Presiding Officer at the Place of Poll should stamp his allocated batch of ballots with the numbered stamp of that polling place, and intermix the ballots with the ballots cast at that polling place that day.

I wish to present the following facts which have emerged during the recount:

1. Of the 287,358 ballots counted so far, the number of rejected ballots is 2673, or less than one percent, certainly within the range of normal for an election;

2. Those rejected ballots include ballots showing more than one X, or no X at all, or showing the name of the voter, or showing an X or check in a location where the intention of the voter cannot be determined, and where the ballot is unstamped, this last item representing only a small proportion of the total rejected ballots so far;

3. The largest number of rejected ballots so far seen in a single box is about 20, of which only a fraction (if any) would be unstamped. So there is clearly no correlation between unstamped ballots and DS batches of 30 – 40 ballots.

I am alarmed that Col. Gomes would claim that ‘over 8,000 DS votes were not stamped.’ This is an untruth. So far, there have been only 2673 rejected ballots, and only a minority of those would be as a result of lack of a stamp. Where does Gomes get his number from?

I am alarmed that Col. Gomes would add to his lie by blaming imaginary non-stamping on ‘PPP agents’ and locating it in ‘PPP strongholds’. More untruths, but incendiary untruths. The duty to stamp is on the Presiding Officers (PO’s), and from all evidence so far, those PO’s have kept that duty.

I wish to say to the hard working and patriotic members of the Disciplined Services that your leaders are lying to you. Your votes have counted. Please do not be misled.

Yours faithfully, Timothy Jonas