PPP/C already found in Guyana 210 voters whom Coalition claimed had ‘migrated’

The desperation of the APNU/AFC continues to be exposed as more of their claims that votes were cast in the names of migrated persons are being disputed.

During the ongoing National Recount of the March 2 votes, the Coalition have been claiming that ‘dead’ and ‘migrated’ persons had voted on Elections Day, and their elections agent Joseph Harmon had written the Chair of the Guyana Elections Commission, Justice Claudette Singh, to probe these claims.
The GECOM Chair had, in turn, passed the names of those more-than-500 persons over to Police Commissioner Leslie James, who is also the Chief Immigration Officer, to

verify their records.
However, Opposition Leader and General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic, Bharrat Jagdeo, has disclosed that of the two lists submitted by Harmon, comprising of some 517 names, the PPP/C has already found a total of 210 of these persons in Guyana, and they confirmed that they were here and voted on March 2.
“And we’re still finding; because it’s only couple of days ago that we got the list, and we’ve found already nearly half of those that Harmon says were out the country and couldn’t have voted – we’re finding them in Guyana. So, it just shows how much of a fishing expedition they’re sending us on, and therefore we have to reject this,” Jagdeo posited.
He noted that this shows how much Harmon and his party are panicking with the recount nearing completion. The exercise has, moreover, shown the PPP/C in the lead.

Fake, spurious, ridiculous
Only Wednesday, the Coalition claimed that the results generated from the recount cannot be credible because of the high incidence of fraud. As such, they called for the elections to be nullified.
But according to Jagdeo, those claims by the Coalition are “fake, spurious and ridiculous”, and are designed to trap the GECOM Chair into responding to their claims in order to given them some legitimacy.
He pointed out that, despite having no jurisdiction to probe the claims, the GECOM Chair went ahead and wrote the Immigration Chief, who found that, from the first list of 210 names, some 35 persons were in fact in Guyana. However, the Immigration Chief has said that the 172 others were out of the jurisdiction – something Jagdeo is disputing.
The Opposition Leader disclosed that, in just four days, the PPP/C found in Guyana 32 of those 172 people whom the Top Cop had said his records show are out of the country. To this end, Jagdeo has called for James to withdraw his response to GECOM.
“In the face of this expose and the people coming forward, the Commissioner must now consider withdrawing that letter that he sent to Claudette Singh, because the information that he supplied was incorrect, and vastly so… The list is flawed and has flawed information,” he said.
Jagdeo furthered that even if these persons were out of Guyana, there is no way to show that they had actually voted, and GECOM itself cannot verify this assertion.
This situation, he added, is further compounded by the fact that a Guyanese man overseas is now asking GECOM to investigate whether indeed someone had voted in his name while he is abroad. Jagdeo said more requests like this one can further complicate the issue.

GECOM not court of law
Jagdeo further contended that even the submission of the information to GECOM is without consequence, because GECOM is not a court of law.
“The Guyana Elections Commission cannot annul the elections, and they cannot validate or invalidate a single vote. That has to be done in court and in an elections petition after the declaration is made. They know they are on weak ground… so now we have to go find 400 more people to find out if they were here and voted…It is ridiculous,” he added.
The Opposition Leader pointed out that Harmon’s claim: that 90,000 people had voted when they shouldn’t have, is even more ridiculous.
“Everybody knows this is impossible, totally impossible… I don’t think anyone in Guyana, even APNU supporters, could ever comprehend this. How could 90,000 people vote who’re not supposed to vote? And then you were claiming victory only a couple days ago. When did you discovered these 90 thousand people?” he questioned.
According to Jagdeo, the polling day process was robust, and party agents from both main political parties were in almost all polling stations.
“If anything, this recount has uncovered how robust our system is, and how fraud- proof it is; because a lot of the widespread allegations by APNU – wild-wild allegations by APNU — have been proven wrong and false on so many occasions; and so it shows how robust polling day procedures are,” he stated.
Moreover, the Opposition Leader reminded that most international organisations and all observers, even caretaker President David Granger himself, had all lauded the polling day activities.