…Ministers reflect on events of March 2, 2020
Public Works Minister Bishop Juan Edghill has said the General and Regional Elections of March 2, 2020 were a defining moment for leadership, a moment in time that showed Guyana and the rest of the world the kind of leadership needed to take the country forward. He said there was a need for ‘good leadership’ leading up to, during, and after the elections.
Minister Edghill played an integral role during the five months when the world watched as the then APNU+AFC Government attempted to steal the elections using all the ‘tricks up their sleeves’, which were all documented.
Minister Edghill said, “If, at that first attempt, [Keith] Lowenfield and [Clairmont] Mingo were able to intermingle those fictitious numbers of Region Four and join it to those other returning officers and make a general declaration, you could cry foul however you want; once that declaration was made…”
Edghill, Public Service Minister Sonia Parag, M.P, and Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister, Kwame McCoy, M.P, were being interviewed on the two-year anniversary of the elections on Thursday. The Public Works Minister has said peace and development are ‘inseparable twins’, and that the business environment must be predictable, which means there must be people who observe the rule of law.
For that reason, he said, the events of 2020 must never recur on Guyana’s soil.
“In terms of electoral reform, the one thing that every decent, law-abiding, democratic Guyanese needs to sign on to is a principle that says what happened must never happen again, and let us put mechanisms in place to make sure they never happen again. And if anybody ever attempts to do that, you must find yourself in a jail, because you are not good for the democratic process of this country, you must be penalised,” Edghill noted.
Former Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield and former Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo, among others, are before the courts facing charges of electoral fraud.
In addition, Minister McCoy echoed the sentiments of Minister Edghill. He said the Government of the day portrays the kind of leadership the people of Guyana voted for on March 2.
“We believe, as we have demonstrated, that we have the right leadership in Guyana to be able to take us to where we will all be prosperous, successful, socially just, making sure that there is equity in the distribution of the wealth and resources. And that is what matters to most Guyanese, and that is what we promised them. We will work hard and work hard every day to deliver those things to the people of Guyana,” Minister McCoy has said.
