The PNC machinery have gone into overdrive to salvage their barefaced rigging of the March 2 elections through their machinations, which were executed by Reg 4 RO Clairmont Mingo and some other myrmidons in the GECOM Secretariat. Once again, it would appear that they assumed they would win the elections, and when they entered the stretch halfway through tabulation of the Reg 4 SOPs, they were forced to show their hand.
Unfortunately for them, this was done in front of international observers and Western ambassadors.
Forced to accept a recount – which one very active PNC operative close to Chairman Lawrence has pronounced to be “illegal” – the PNC have again shown their hand on how they would deal with this threat to their plan to swear in David Granger as the president: by ignoring the votes of the people.
The plan has two inter-related prongs: create diversions during the count; with their representatives making carefully- planned, frequent objections, which not only slows down the process to a snail’s pace, but also provides grist for a social media disinformation blitz domestically and internationally.
While misinformation refers to inaccuracies that stem from error, disinformation is deliberate falsehood promulgated by design. These objections are now attached to each Statement of Recount (SOR) as “Observations”, to be evaluated at the end of the process.
It also is a strategic move calculated to provide the grounds to claim that the elections were irredeemably corrupted, and that the results must be discarded. Then, either the Mingo numbers – held in “abeyance” by GECOM Chair Claudette Singh – can be used as a basis to declare APNU/AFC the winner, and David Granger be sworn in as president; or new elections can be scheduled.
Some of the allegations will be used to claim that the Official Voters’ List is “bloated”, and there needs to be a new house-to- house registration. All of this, of course, will be stretched out for another five years, which will see the PNC-as-APNU/AFC in office for that duration.
We saw the ploy in operation from day one of the recount, when the PNC agent produced a newly issued death certificate to claim that an individual had voted in the election. Ignoring the fact that there are several individuals with the identical name, no proof was offered to show that it was the deceased who had “voted”. But this is now on the “Observations” sheet to evaluate the validity of the elections later.
Other objections stemmed from a missing “polling book”, which was soon supplied; and a claim that APNU/AFC were awarded less votes than they had received, which was shown to be false. But the delay and disinformation objectives had been achieved.
One particularly egregious disinformation claim was that some PPP agents were in a “secret meeting” with a GECOM IT employee, implying that the inputted data would be corrupted. Again, this was debunked, not only by the twenty other persons who had seen and heard the PPP agents make an innocuous inquiry to the IT staffer in full view of everyone, but also by the GECOM PRO.
The APNU/AFC propagandists, in the meantime, posted the IT employee’s name and photograph across social media, where he was denounced for “taking bribes”. In this heightened, polarised atmosphere, they ignored the dangers to which they were exposing this innocent person.
The latest objection was voiced by no less a person than the APNU/AFC GECOM Commissioner Vincent Alexander, who claimed that more persons had voted in one named polling station than had been struck off from the voters’ list by the presiding officer.
He is fully conversant with the fact that there are several reasons why this might be the case, if in fact his claim was valid. For instance, the votes of the disciplined forces’ personnel, which are cast one week before the national polls, are sent back to their districts in batches, to identified polling stations, to be intermixed with the ballots cast by persons on the voting list for that polling station.
Guyanese must not fall for the PNC’s disinformation blitz.
