Essequibo Coast family pursuing legal action against APNU/AFC

…perturbed over use of relative’s death certificate

The family of the dead woman whose death certificate is being used by the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) coalition to push its contentious narrative of dead persons having voted during the March 2 polls is pursuing legal action against the political grouping.
Since the national election recount commenced some three weeks ago, APNU/AFC agents have been making objections to certain ballots claiming that the vote was cast using the names of either dead people or those who have migrated. However, in several instances, some of the so-called ‘migrated’ persons have expressed dismay at the rhetoric by the APNU/AFC since they are right here in Guyana.
The party officials have claimed that they had hundreds of death certificates to show that dead persons voted. In fact, caretaker Minister Cathy Hughes had defended her party’s access to the documents, telling media operatives that the persons were identified by the party through its fieldwork and that the certificates were later applied for and the $300 fee paid.
As such, a recent article published in the State-owned newspaper featured the death certificate of ‘Chitnandani Ramdass’ – a now deceased resident of Maria’s Lodge, Essequibo Coast, Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam) under whose name the coalition is alleging a vote was cast.
However, it was reported that no one actually voted under the dead woman’s name. Her name was unticked on the voter’s list, that is, the ‘pink list’ from the polling station indicating that there was no vote was cast in her name – as has been the case with most of the objections made by the coalition during the ongoing recount exercise.

Family perturbed
Nevertheless, the woman’s family is upset that the APNU/AFC is using its private records for political purposes.
Her son, Puran Manbode, told Guyana Times that they never granted permission for APNU/AFC to access or even use the death certificate.
Manbode explained that a coalition representative from the area went to their house and asked for the full name of his dead mother under the pretext of doing some infrastructure work in the area.
“The coalition had a guy… going around. They come by me now and asked “who name ‘Ramdass’”. So, my wife told him that is her mother-in-law. But he come around in a way like and say water running over in somebody yard. So, he come impersonating,” the man related.
He noted that two days later, they saw the article in the state-owned Guyana Chronicle newspaper with his mother’s death certificate.
“Then my wife tell me he did come, and then we realise that the fella instigate the thing, because he de ask for my mother right name. My wife didn’t know what going on, so she tell he my mother name ‘Chitnandani’,” the son added.
After the article was published, the man said he called up his siblings and none of them knew that their mother’s death certificate was being used by the coalition.
According to Manbode, this is not the only instance. He told this newspaper that the same individual had even approached another man in the same street for information on a family member.
This publication was told that a Government Minister, who lives one village away, has a representative manoeuvring in several villages on the Essequibo Coast, finding out about dead relatives of residents.
Nevertheless, Manbode contended that his mother’s death certificate is a personal document for the family and should not be published for the world to see.
To this end, the family has retained Attorney Glenn Hanoman to pursue legal action.
“A death certificate supposed to be in the family; it’s a personal document. How come they gone and pick it up and who authorised them to pick it up. I didn’t authorise them; and none of my siblings didn’t authorise them… [For example] if my mother had died of AIDS now and they gone and publish the death certificate for the whole world to see, how this woulda look for my family? That’s why we want to take this thing further,” the man stated.

Legal pursuit
Meanwhile, Opposition People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Executive and former Attorney General Anil Nandlall spoke about the issue on Tuesday and offered to assist the family in their legal cases.
He believes that this is just one of many such infractions whereby the coalition is abusing State power.
An examination of the original death certificate issued to the family in 2017, and the copy obtained by the coalition show that the latter document was issued on January 30 of this year. Notably, it does not bear the identification number for the dead woman while the first certificate supplied by the family does bear the name.
Nandlall told reporters outside the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC) on Tuesday that it appeared that the APNU/AFC was securing the records by using Government apparatus to extract people’s personal documents without their permission “and use it, worse yet for political purposes…we don’t know how many thousands of these have been generated for the purpose of this.”
The former AG was adamant that the records in question could only be accessed by family members and that this authorisation had not been provided. He noted that the APNU/AFC, in addition to possibly breaching the Access to Information laws, could very well be guilty of a range of other electoral-related legal infractions.