The Attorney General (AG) of Guyana and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall has dispatched a letter to the Chairwoman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) asking that she provides evidence of fraudulent voting at the March 2, 2022, General and Regional Elections.
The AG in his letter made it known that he is acting on behalf of the Government of Guyana. He stated that, “During the National Recount of ballots cast at the March 2, 2020, Regional and General Elections at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, it was published in the media that A Partnership for National Unity/ Alliance for Change (APNU/AFC), a coalition of political parties that contested the elections, delivered to you certain documents allegedly, to establish the following: that deceased persons purportedly voted at those elections, that those elections were tainted by multiple voting and that persons who were overseas on voting day, purportedly voted at those elections.”
It was the GECOM Chair herself who had written the then Commissioner of Police Leslie James on Friday, May 22, 2020, asking him to check on the list of names APNU+AFC had submitted to her claiming it contains persons who were out of the country and had voted.
On May 27, 2020, five days later, the Commissioner of Police, who is also the country’s Chief Immigration Officer, told the Chairman of ECOM, that 172 of the persons she inquired about were not in the country on election day, March 2.
The Peoples’ Progressive Party (PPP) has never accepted that dead and overseas persons voted in the March 2, 2020, Elections. “These allegations continue to be peddled in the public domain by leaders and representatives of the aforesaid political entity, ” the AG said.
In casting his own judgment on the matter, the Attorney General wants the Chairwoman of GECOM to help the Government identify those institutions and persons who provided her with the information so that he can determine the legality of their actions.
“At the time and until now, the impression conveyed is that these documents and/or data were generated by and obtained from the official lawful repository of the specific information, for example, the Immigration Department, Guyana Police Force and the General Registrar’s office. You will appreciate that these are grave allegations, and as baseless and unfounded as they were proven to be, it is important that the relevant state agency enquires into the source of this information, upon whose directions they were sourced, and perhaps, most importantly, to officially reconfirm their inaccuracy, for the public record,” the argues.
However, former Speaker of the National Assembly Ralph Ramkarran, has repeatedly stated that objections that ‘touch on the credibility of the elections process’ belong in an elections petition court and that GECOM has neither the mandate nor the power to collect evidence.
There are presently two election petitions dealing with the very matters raised by the AG in his letter to the GECOM Chair. Unfortunately, the Government is fighting tooth and nail to have those petitions dismissed on frivolous grounds and by using various delaying tactics.
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