PPP, AFC trade intimidation charges

The Alliance For Change and the People’s Progressive Party are claiming their candidates and backers of lists of candidates contesting the November 12 Local Government Elections (LGEs) are being bullied and intimidated by each other’s activists and supporters.

The AFC said it considers this campaign tactic by the PPP as a threat to Guyana’s democracy given that the PPP government sabotaged the AFC by refusing to hold LGEs between 1994 and 2014.

In a release, the AFC said, the party received credible reports of the bullying and intimidation of its local government candidates and their supporting signatories by PPP activists and operatives and that “Various persons who backed AFC candidates for the upcoming Local Government Elections have been coerced into visiting GECOM (Guyana Elections Commission) offices to request that their names be removed as signatories.”

Calling for this matter “to be urgently investigated and for Returning Officers not to be cowed by the PPP to invalidate any of the signatories since at this stage the presumption of regularity should apply,” the AFC said, it reaffirmed its support for GECOM.

The AFC said, “The PPP has also resorted to widespread verbal abuse, threats and victimization of persons who openly supported the AFC in PPP strongholds in the 2015 National and Regional Elections, and now for the November 12th Local Government Elections.”

Urging its supporters to remain strong and not to give in to the “PPP’s defeatist tactic”, the AFC said, it was contesting the LGEs for the first time as an independent party, and anticipates that its candidates will be successful throughout Guyana.

“The PPP is fearful of AFC’s challenge and is trying to use our party as the scapegoat for its campaign to discredit GECOM and elections in Guyana,” the AFC said.

The PPP in a statement in response to the AFC, said, it noted the AFC’s ‘spins’ “regarding the moves by several persons to have their names, which were included on the AFC List of Nominators (backers list) fraudulently, removed.”

The PPP said while the AFC has accused it of intimidating LGE candidates into removing their names from AFC lists, “the facts are a matter of public record, including reports by the local media corps over the past two weeks, which speak to persons being ‘tricked’ and ‘pressured’ into signing AFC List of Nominators.”

The PPP said at the Whim/Bloomfield Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC) in Region 6 (East Berbice/ Corentyne) where Mavis Nagamootoo, sister-inlaw of AFC Executive and Prime Minister, Moses Nagamootoo, is the leader of the list, 51 people have submitted sworn affidavits to have their names removed.

Though the people have sworn affidavits, the PPP said, some of them were being subjected to a confrontation with Mavis Nagamootoo and by the returning officer (RO) to have their names removed from the AFC list of nominators.

They are concerned about the confrontation, the PPP said, due to their worries that they would be targeted.

Some of them, the PPP said, “are also being subjected to questioning by the Returning Officer, an act that can be described as intimidation, given the line of questioning.”

Such questions, the PPP said, include “Which political party do you support? Why did you not object to your name being included on the AFC list earlier?”

The 51 people with sworn affidavits, the PPP said, should not be subjected to such treatment.