Leader of the Alliance For Change (AFC), the minority party in the incumbent Coalition, Khemraj Ramjattan, has rebuffed claims by Major General (ret’d) Joseph Singh that sections of the party have hijacked the party.
AFC Leader Khemraj Ramjattan
In an open letter to President David Granger on Wednesday, Singh posited that the incumbent Head of State is “being manipulated by persons who do not have the best interest of our beloved Guyana at heart, and who are prepared to hold you hostage to their own evil intentions, and to manipulate you and the Constitution of this country to achieve their own personal and collective goals, unbothered by the catastrophic impact their actions to date are having on national morale; on the fears and anxieties of all Guyanese, whether or not they are supporters of your political party.”
Singh had gone on to say to the President: “You are at the crossroads, where you have to now choose between pampering a cabal who bode you no good and who certainly have neither the national interest nor your interest at heart. In their warped, self-centred way, they are manipulating the Constitution, the Supreme Law, and their allies in various national institutions and services of this land to serve their purposes.”
Former army Chief and GECOM Chairman, Retired Major General Joe Singh
The letter from Singh, a former Chief of Staff of the Guyana Defence Force and Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), came on the heels of an independent high-level CariCom team abandoning the much-anticipated recounting process in Guyana.
After receiving a request from President David Granger, and with the agreement of Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo, Chair of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley, had fielded a five-member team to supervise a national recount of the votes cast in the recent elections. However, the regional team was forced to withdraw their services on Tuesday, after a series of delaying tactics had been employed by GECOM and, finally, after the High Court had blocked the recounting process from moving forward by granting a series of injunctions sought by a candidate of the APNU/AFC coalition putatively as a “private citizen”.
Since then, Granger has come in for mounting criticism over what has been described as a “duplicitous” move.
However, in response to Singh’s letter on Thursday, Ramjattan, who is also the Prime Ministerial Candidate for the Coalition, denied that the party has been hijacked.
“So Joe Singh…has already made up his mind that some faction of the party has hijacked the process from His Excellency. This is outrageous!!!… Unless I am behind the clouds,” the AFC leader asserted.
He went on to concede that while Singh’s letter was a “powerful” one, for him personally, the best policy and posture in moments like these is the “law and history”.
He went on to argue that there must be a “presumption of regularity” of what GECOM does, and, as such, the only recourse must be the filing of an elections petition after claims of irregularity.
He ignored that the CJ had already pronounced on this matter, which was now res judicata.
“We may suspect, have our concerns, be going crazy with what we believe might have gone wrong. But we have to believe until that presumption is rebutted. It is rebutted after an election ends and is completed by a swearing in of a President, and then by a Court with jurisdiction to hear witnesses, open and recount boxes…the whole gamut.”
The “lesson of history” he cited was the 1997 elections which were voided by then Justice Claudette Singh, but he failed to concede that the PNC‘s claims of PPP rigging were debunked by a CariCom forensic audit, and the election petition had to do with use of IDs in the election — something the PNC and the PPP had agreed on before the elections.
The AFC leader further appeared to be appealing to expediency when he predicted that, “This country will be in huge problems whichever party wins. And we must not abdicate any responsibility to ensure these problems are solved. The surest way there is is being guided by the law and lessons of history.”
While the incumbent leaders continue to display an adamant stance on the ongoing elections debacle, Guyana continues to face international condemnation over its electoral processes.
In fact, only Wednesday, The Commonwealth Observer Group announced that it has withdrawn from Guyana, citing serious and persistent electoral malpractice following the March 2 polling day and the failure of GECOM to stop the blatant disregard for the rule of law and electoral ethics.
The Observer Group, which was headed by former Prime Minister of Barbados Owen Arthur, contended that the tabulation processes conducted by the Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) Returning Officer, Clairmont Mingo, were not credible, transparent and inclusive.
The Mission noted that the series of events that the Group observed in the tabulation of Region Four results between March 3 and 14 are of grave concern, and pointed specifically to the failure of the RO to comply with the Court orders of the acting Chief Justice, Roxane George.
The Mission stated that even after the March 13 hearing, the RO refused all requests from those entitled to be present to view the actual statements of poll, and did not display the spreadsheet being tabulated.
“This compromised the process of ascertaining the credibility of the statements of poll relied on by Mr. Mingo to tabulate the results; and, it was impossible for party agents and those entitled to be present to observe that the numbers being called out were being accurately entered on the spreadsheet. In multiple instances, the number of votes announced by Mr. Mingo on 13 March differed from those which had previously been agreed by all parties present during the first 4 March tabulation process. In some cases, this resulted in tabulation totals reflecting more voters than were entered on the list of eligible electors for certain polling stations.”
According to the Commonwealth Group, at no point during all of this did the leadership of GECOM halt or rectify these blatant instances of disregard for the rule of law and electoral ethics.
Nevertheless, the Group commended Guyanese for exercising their franchise on March 2, noting that this constitutional right will only be respected when every vote is transparently and credibly counted.
