Elections “wrongdoers” should be prosecuted to the fullest

Dear Editor,
Guyanese were made to endure more pain and frustration after the CCJ announced that their decision would be made on Wednesday, July 8, 2020. We were all disgusted with the release of preliminary results which sought to give Granger’s party the lead in the elections.
Then, adding to all the legal shenanigans which led to a recount, there was a recent report by Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield, who tried to invalidate over 115,000 votes. That report was rebuked by CARICOM Chair Mia Mottley.
Now we are back in the courts, awaiting the CCJ’s decision. Despite all of this, the PNC-led APNU-AFC continues to disseminate a series of false narratives and misleading information, such as “thousands of members of the joint services were disenfranchised on Elections Day because the GECOM staff failed to stamp their ballots…”
That is ridiculous. The ballots counted on E-Day and during the recount process conducted during May/June 2020 followed the lawful process and invalidated or rejected ONLY 4,213 of the votes cast in the presence of several non-GECOM stakeholders.
This process is in accordance with the law, and ensured that credibility was preserved. However, one must know that the ballots of thousands of our members of the joint services were intermixed with the civilian ballots. It is premature for the APNU/AFC to be spreading these lies.
There is also no process by which GECOM or any other source can determine if any of those rejected ballots were from the joint services or civilian ballots. What is unfortunate is that, months after this PNC fantasy surfaced, the APNU-AFC has failed to provide any “VERIFIABLE PROOF”, but recklessly continue to peddle this blatant untruth that anomalies, discrepancies, and irregularities were unearthed.
For one to properly understand the absurdity of this allegation made by the PNC in their attempt to create feelings of ill-will among the ranks, one has to understand the evil embedded in the minds of the members of the APNU/AFC.
The claims of fraud were grossly exaggerated, and unfortunately were designed to fool the APNU/AFC party supporters, who had placed their faith in the Coalition.
The claims by the APNU+AFC were inferential in nature, relying on bold headlines, repetition, and the use of words such as ‘massive’, ‘gargantuan’, ‘widespread’ and ‘intense’ to scale up their impact.
The evidence provided by the APNU+AFC was either frail or insufficient to establish that there was fraud to an extent that could affect the outcome of the entire election in any region. There was no real evidence of PPP-C involvement in any of the irregularities uncovered during the recount.
It is sad to say that the APNU/AFC will go to this length to make their supporters believe that there was actual evidence of serious election rigging by the PPP/C. It must be known that the APNU/AFC hurt the Guyanese people, but this was remedied when the populace hurt them back at the polls.
In other words, all we have are a number of irregularities, many of which can be attributed to human error; unlike the Mingo declarations. And they do not show a result that is grossly inconsistent with normal voting patterns in Guyana.
Whenever the final declaration is made and the next president, Dr Irfaan Ali, is sworn in, we will urge that there be proper investigation, and all the wrongdoers should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
The APNU/AFC will not succeed in its efforts to reverse the results of the national recount of all ballots cast in the March 02, 2020, General and Regional Elections which clearly show a win in favour of the Opposition People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C).
The reason is because these elections in 2020 were free, fair and credible, as they have all been since 1992, notwithstanding the allegations that have been made by these same losers, or anyone else, after every election.
We must be reminded that as part of the Herdmanston Accord, there was an audit of the 1997 elections supervised by Justice Ulric Cross of Trinidad and Tobago, and he found no fraud.
Granger, Harmon and the APNU+AFC cabal need to abandon the course of driving fear, despondency and false hopes into their supporters, and should gear up to provide a vigorous, creative, forward looking opposition which would defend the interests of the people and hold the Government to account.
I reiterate, a PPP/C Government will be installed with Dr Irfaan Ali as the 9th President of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana. Mr Granger, the time will come for you to concede.

Sincerely,
David Adams