APNU/AFC signals failure of election petition

…by filing “backup” petition

The defeated A Partnership For National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) coalition will be filing two election petitions – just in case one fails – with the Supreme Court of Judicature on Monday, according to Chairman of the AFC Raphael Trotman.

Trotman made the announcement on Friday during a virtual engagement with the media. The APNU/AFC is seeking to have the results of the March 2 General and Regional Elections – which were declared on August 2 and gazetted on August 21 – overturned.
The party is contending that the elections were riddled with cases of voter fraud coupled with the manipulation of the results and missing statutory documents. Based on Trotman’s statement, instances of missing statutory documents – poll books, counterfoils, Official List of Electors – and dead and migrated people voting are the grounds on which the coalition is contesting the results.
He explained that the party’s lawyers approached the High Court on Thursday and filed its application for leave to pave the way for the filing of the petition. He noted that while it is not written in any of the laws that leave of the court is required, the practice is one that has been in existence and continues to be followed.
Trotman related that the coalition expects that the application would be speedily granted and that the court will not frustrate the speedy hearing of the two petitions. However, he did explain the reason for two petitions being the strict nature of the laws governing election petitions.
“This is a very tedious and meticulous process…one error could make everything fatal and there is no second chance. We know that application has to be filed within 28 days of the official declaration of the results. Those results were only officially declared last Friday so we are well within the time even though there is some confusion,” he said.
“It is not the first time that multiple petitions have been filed following an election and with good reason should one fail there is another to stand up. Because as I said, the law in relation to petition is very strict. Compliance is very strict. So if there is any failing and many petitions have failed – I think there has been one successful petition in the history of Guyana that was the 1998 Esther Pereira petition – all the others have failed and so with good reason, it is important to have multiple petitions so if there is a defect in one, that defect hopefully would not be found in the other,” Trotman added.
When asked about the lawyers anticipated to present the coalition’s case, Trotman said while the list has not been yet confirmed, the party has been receiving requests from lawyers in and out of Guyana volunteering their service. He furthered that almost all of the lawyers in the coalition would want to be associated with the petition in one way or the next. Thus far, that list includes Roysdale Forde, Geeta Chandan-Edmond, Trotman, Khemraj Ramjattan among others.
Though being one of the parties in the coalition, Trotman could not answer the important questions in relation to the petitions, its anticipated evidence and in whose name it would be filed. He, without divulging any information, urged reporters to wait until the petition is filed
One aspect of election petition hearing is returning to the ballot boxes and doing visual inspections. Trotman is hoping that in this case, the court relies on the observation reports from the National Recount since that covered most of the grounds in terms of where the alleged discrepancies and illegalities would lie. He related that all that now remains is the question of whether those allegations are sufficient enough, on both a quantitate and qualitative basis, to overturn the elections.
On Thursday, Joseph Harmon, who served as the coalition’s Campaign Manager and an elections agent, confirmed that the party is ready to present its case. In a Facebook post, he also called on the party supporters to breach the COVID-19 restrictions and “mobilise in numbers to lend support to our party. We want a big manifestation against this persecution that is going on.”
However, many have come out bashing his move, especially given the fact that the emergency measures currently in place to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus here prohibit any public gathering in large numbers. The AFC, during its press conference, defended Harmon’s call, noting that COVID-19 guidelines would be in effect.
Harmon had also announced that the coalition has formally written to the Heads of several international organisations as well as diplomatic partners, outlining that “based on the vast amount of evidence” the APNU/AFC coalition “believes, and intends to prove, that the elections held on March 2 lacked credibility and legitimacy”.
However, a National Recount which was agreed to by former President David Granger and then Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo showed that the PPP/C secured 233,336 votes while the APNU/AFC obtained 217,920 votes – a difference of some 15,416 votes.
But after five months of a series of litigation and delayed tactics, the PPP/C was finally declared the winner of the March 2, 2020 elections by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) and Dr Irfaan Ali was sworn in as Guyana’s ninth Executive President on August 2.
According to the National Assembly (Validity of Elections) Act, an election petition must be filed in the High Court within 28 days of the election results being declared and published in the Guyana Gazette under Section 99 of the Representation of the People Act. (G2)