In a move that has been described as “breaking ranks”, the Justice For All Party (JFAP) – one of the five parties that make up the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) component of the incumbent coalition – has joined calls for there to be a recount of all the ballots cast at the March 2 General and Regional Elections.
JFAP Leader CNS Sharma
“We believe that the recounting process should be permitted and ALL ballots should be immediately recounted in an expeditious and transparent manner,” the Chandra Narine Sharma-led party said in a statement on Thursday.
According to the JFAP, it stands for democracy and believes in the will of the people.
In fact, it is for this reason that its leader spent most of his life highlighting issues affecting Guyanese through his “Voice of the People” television programme.
This missive noted that Sharma and his wife, Savitree Singh-Sharma, the General Secretary of JFAP, both hold incumbent President David Granger in high regard. They believe that he is a man of integrity hence he requested the high-level Caricom team to supervise the counting process, which has since been blocked by the High Court resulting in the regional team withdrawing their services.
Dominic Gaskin
Nevertheless, the JFAP leader contended the recount was a crucial step given all that has happened over the past several days.
On this note, Sharma posited that any party that wins the elections through a transparent process will have the support of JFAP.
“We are uncertain of the party dynamics at this time, but we appeal to Mr Granger to do the right thing and allow the recounting process to be immediately completed to honour the will of the people of Guyana,” the missive from JFAP stated.
Sharma is not the only coalition stakeholder to speak out about the current electoral fiasco.
Last week, Executive Member of the Alliance For Change (AFC), the minority partner of the incumbent coalition, Dominic Gaskin, who had served as Business Minister between 2015 and 2019, questioned the credibility of the results for Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), which have been marred by allegations of fraud.
Gaskin, who is also President Granger’s son-in-law, in a social media post last Friday said that “given all that has taken place over the last 12 days, I am not sufficiently convinced that the results of the Region Four elections as declared by the GECOM (Guyana Elections Commission) RO [Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo] last Thursday (March 5) accurately reflect the results recorded on the various Statements of Poll collected from the 879 Polling Stations” .
In fact, he surmised: “I have a difficulty accepting that all the persons and organisations who have so far deemed the process to lack credibility have somehow gotten it wrong. I have a difficulty understanding why GECOM, specifically the Region Four RO, would not be bending over backwards to convince the various observers that his tabulation process was sound and all his results credible.”
According to Gaskin, GECOM needs to publish its SoPs for all to see, otherwise, it can never hold credible elections in Guyana again.
Asked the following day about this statement by an Executive Member, AFC’s Chairman, Raphael Trotman, contended that it was Gaskin’s personal view and did not reflect the view of the party leadership or the “majority” of membership.
