The People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) will be meeting with Police Commissioner, Leslie James on Wednesday following the party’s request for a meeting to discuss matters of national security.
Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo
The meeting is scheduled for 10:00h at the Commissioner’s Office.
On June 4, the PPP/C wrote Commissioner James requesting an “urgent meeting” on Monday. However, that meeting did not happen and was rather scheduled for Wednesday.
The letter, which was sent by former Attorney General Anil Nandlall, stated that the party’s General Secretary, Bharrat Jagdeo will be accompanied by a team of PPP/C leaders at the meeting to “discuss certain security concerns of public importance”.
Police Commissioner Leslie James
The Top Cop has been under fire recently for releasing inaccurate immigration information to the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM).
The PPP/C has been continuously expressing concerns over the use of independent agencies, particularly the Guyana Police Force, for political purposes. It is believed that the caretaker David Granger-led Administration utilised the Department of Citizenship, headed by Winston Felix, to access immigration and death records for political purposes.
The APNU/AFC submitted the information to GECOM after alleging that those persons were out of the country or dead. To date, they have not provided the evidence to support their claim of voters’ irregularity.
Police Commissioner James had submitted to GECOM a list of 172 persons the Guyana Police Force claims were not in the country on or before March 2. However, many of those individuals have since come forward to refute the Police Force’s records.
The Top Cop supplied the list to the GECOM Chairperson, Retired Justice Claudette Singh – after she would have sent him an initial list of some 200 names, provided by the coalition, to verify whether those individuals were out of the jurisdiction on Elections Day as is being claimed by the coalition. However, eventually, Justice Singh submitted more than 500 names to the Top Cop to verify whether they were in Guyana on March 2 or not.
After numerous persons came forward to refute the data provided by the Top Cop, the Guyana Police Force issued a statement saying that these persons would have left Guyana “legally” but returned “illegally”. However, this statement was highly criticised.
The Opposition Leader disclosed that, in just days, the PPP/C found in Guyana 210 of 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.
Just recently, Kaminie Singh of Cornelia Ida, West Coast Demerara, came forward after the Top Cop said she was out of the country. Singh said the last time she left Guyana was over five years ago and did in fact vote at the Cornelia Ida Nursery School.
Another voter whom APNU/AFC claimed migrated, Nishani Bissessar, presented an Affidavit of Existence and Presence on Tuesday last to attest to her physically voting. She denied the claims, contained in the list of ‘migrant’ voters, that she was out of the country. The woman resides at Vergenoegen, East Bank Essequibo, and would have voted at the Vergenoegen Nursery School.
Compton Bacchus and Amos Bhola of Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam) both denied the allegations that they were migrant voters. Meanwhile, Sydney Douglas Jones of Diamond, East Bank Demerara, and Kimbelie Karishma Raghunandan are among others who the Top Cop claims were out of the country. They have all come together to deny the inaccurate information.
