“Golding has more credibility than the entire APNU/AFC cabal” – Jagdeo

General Secretary of the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP), Bharrat Jagdeo, has fired back at A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) Coalition over claims they made in relation to former Jamaica Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s damning assessment of the fraudulent declaration of the District Four results.

Golding had led the Organisation of American States’ Electoral Observation Mission (OAS EOM) to monitor Guyana’s March 2 General and Regional Elections; and on Wednesday, the EOM head presented his preliminary report to the Permanent Council of the OAS, during which he said he had “never seen a more transparent effort to alter the results of an election.”
This reportedly angered the Coalition, and in a desperate attempt to discredit the

preliminary findings of the OAS Observer Mission, the APNU/AFC launched a tirade against the Caribbean statesman in which they alleged that Golding’s “friendship” with Mr Jagdeo disqualifies him from making an independent and fair assessment of the conduct of Guyana’s polls.
However, Jagdeo, a former President himself, during a virtual press briefing on Thursday, lashed out at the Coalition for deliberately ignoring the reports of all the international observers, which stated that the tabulation process for District Four lacked credibility and transparency.
“This has nothing to do with friendship. What Golding saw, the entire OAS Observer Mission saw, all seventeen of them from 13 countries. The observers from the European Union (and) the Commonwealth all saw the same thing,” Jagdeo noted.
“I have been President for a while, and I have worked with several Prime Ministers around the Caribbean, and I have a good relationship with almost all of them up to today. Bruce Golding and Owen Arthur and many of the others …these are decent people who will never stand for rigging; and they saw what took place.”
The PPP General Secretary reminded that everyone who was present during the District Four tabulation had expressed the same view, and it is only the APNU/AFC who are standing in support of the fraudulent declarations made by Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo.
“APNU/AFC are the only ones that were happy with Mingo’s declarations,” he said.
In relation to Golding’s credibility and track record, Jagdeo said: “Bruce Golding has more credibility, honesty, decency than the entire APNU apparatus; all the Cabinet members put together.”
Taking a swipe at top APNU/AFC Candidate Joseph Harmon, the former President noted that Harmon is in no position to question the credibility of Golding, as he is among a “cabal” in the Coalition that is “defending blatant thievery” of the elections.
The former President noted that the APNU/AFC will never make their Statements of Poll (SOPs) available to the public to back up their claims that they have won the elections, because they are afraid that this would expose Mingo’s figures as fictitious.
During his preliminary report to the OAS Permanent Council on Wednesday, Golding said: “I have never seen a more transparent effort to alter the results of an election.”
According to the OAS EOM Head, this is even more brazen given the paper trail that is in place, including the fact that more than a dozen copies of the Statements of Poll (SOPs), which indicate how many votes were obtained by each party, are prepared at each polling station after the ballots are counted on election night.
“One copy is posted on the wall outside the polling station, and each party representative, and there were nine in all, is entitled to receive a copy. You know, it takes an extraordinarily courageous mind to present fictious numbers when such a sturdy paper trail exists, and this is being illustrated now as the recount proceeds,” the former Jamaica Leader posited.
With today being only the ninth day into the National Recount, the OAS has two representatives here monitoring, and the recount has already revealed that the Region Four results that were declared by embattled Returning Officer (RO) Clairmont Mingo on March 13 were heavily inflated in favour of the incumbent APNU/AFC Coalition.
The Demerara-Mahaica region is the largest voting district in the country, and the only one in which there were major issues during the counting process.