“Let Granger sue me” – former PNC Minister

…travels with Idi Amin-like security

Former Information Minister under the People’s National Congress (PNC) Administration, Kit Nascimento on Saturday said that if caretaker President David Granger believes, as his Ministry claims, that he published falsehoods about him “designed to besmirch” his “good name”, then like any other citizen, he can sue him for libel.

Nascimento was at the time responding to a statement from the Ministry of the Presidency calling for an apology from him and Guyana Times, which published a letter on May 22, which the Ministry claimed had “several untruths and numerous inaccuracies.”
However, in a letter to the editor on Saturday, the former Minister, in a direct smack at Granger, said, “I am sure that there are many many lawyers in Guyana who would be pleased to rush to defend me in court and be delighted at the opportunity to cross-examine David Granger.”

Nascimento said that he will not apologise for saying that Granger arrived at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre “with a massive security akin to an Idi Amin”. That was in reference to Granger’s recent visit to the location where the national elections recount is taking place.
He noted that it is a fact that Granger has surrounded himself, as a “President” ruling a tiny country, with an amount of security larger than any “of our previous Presidents and, certainly, of the kind employed by military dictators such as Idi Amin of Uganda infamy, Sadam Hussein of Iraq, Fidel Castro of Cuba, General Gowan of Nigeria, all of whom I can speak of from my personal experience, having met with them all at one time or another in my past.” The Ministry of the Presidency in its demand for an apology said that Nascimento “must know that President Granger remains President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana until another President is sworn in”.
However, in response, the former PNC Minister said he is aware that David Granger has held on to the presidency for more than a year since another President should have been sworn in.
“He has spent millions of taxpayers’ dollars paying lawyers to keep him in office by refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the No-Confidence Motion against his Government and, even after the CCJ ruling against him, further delaying the holding of an election,” he said in his response.
He added that it is a known fact that Granger also “hangs on to a caretaker, de facto presidency 83 days, as I write this letter, after the election was held on March 2nd, 2020, because GECOM, rather than rejecting [Clairmont] Mingo’s fraudulent attempt at rigging the elections result, has taken us into a recount.”
David Granger, he noted, has used his dubious presidential authority to force himself upon the Chairman of GECOM and her staff and the Caricom scrutineers in a meeting which should never have been held.
Nascimento also denied the Ministry’s claim that he said that Granger refused to answer questions.
“What I said in my letter is that when Granger was asked “whether he would recognise and accept the results of the recount” “he refused to recognise that the recount of the ballots must deliver the results of the elections.”
He added that Granger was asked the question twice and preferred instead to answer it by saying that “whatever declaration is made by the Chairman of the Elections Commission would be recognised as legitimate by the coalition. What I have written is on the record and was seen and heard by all. Ms Singh, of course, does not necessarily have to recognise the recount, hence Granger’s answer.”
At the press conference, he pointed out, Granger also refused, when asked, to recognise that the Keith Lowenfield declaration is fraudulent and should be rejected. “That too is on the record. Granger too refuses to admit to the evidence in the Statements of Poll in his possession that he has lost the elections. I challenge him to publish those Statements.”
The former PNC Minister said that he has the utmost respect for the Office of the President but has little or no respect “for a man who holds on to it, knowing that he has lost and endangers the entire nation by doing so. If David Granger’s character and good name is in question, he has only himself to blame.”
He added that he stands firmly behind his statement that, “Granger hangs onto power from a fraud committed and embraced in GECOM by the very people he has appointed to the Commission and which is embraced by the leading spokespersons of his own party. I repeat, Granger can no longer claim to be innocent.” According to Nascimento, Granger “must do the decent thing. He owes it to the people of this country. He must concede that he has lost. Let his country free.”
On the issue of his comment on a picture from the GECOM meeting, Nascimento conceded, however, that he wrongly believed, from a picture showing Claudette Singh sitting at Granger’s side that was carried in the same report of his press conference, that Singh had attended his press conference. “I apologise unreservedly for that mistake to David Granger and Ms Singh. I have absolutely no apology to make for anything else I have said in my letter, all of which is evidentially accurate,” he stated.