Today marks three years since Guyanese went to the polls on March 2, 2020 to cast their votes unaware that in the following days, a series of events would catapult the country into political and electoral turmoil for the next five months.
Following a mostly peaceful voting day, the days after the March 2020 General and Regional Elections were marred by blatant attempts to rig the polls in favour of the then incumbent A Partnership For National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) coalition regime. These events played out before the local, regional and international diplomatic community, which had widely condemned the acts.
Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall, SC, said the people of Guyana must pledge to do everything in their power to ensure that those events never happen again here – something which he assured the current People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government was committed to.
“As we approach March 2, I want you to be assured that your government is very much alive to those realities that we experienced and we will work to ensure that the democratic credentials of this country are maintained, and that we continue to work to deliver a better tomorrow for every single Guyanese,” he stated.
Nandlall recalled that the elections were finally held after a year-long battle following the passage of the No-Confidence Motion (NCM) against the Coalition Government in December 2018. This struggle, he posited, was further compounded by the anguish and suffering during the 2020 electoral and political impasse – something which he cautioned should not be forgotten.
“We must not forget the lessons that were learnt from those elections. We must not forget the struggles that were associated with ensuring that the votes cast at those elections were actually counted. We must not forget those who put our democracy on trial. We must not forget those who attempted in the most flagrant way to steal those elections. Those who tried in the most vulgar way to prevent the true and real results of those elections from being declared,” Nandlall noted.
He pointed out that many persons made huge sacrifices in ensuring that the sanctity of those elections was preserved and that Guyana’s democratic credentials were protected and defended especially in the face of threats of sanctions on the country from the international community. In fact, several key officials from the previous APNU/AFC Administration, along with others, were slapped with visa sanctions by the United States Government. Other countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom, were also threatening to follow suit.
Nandlall, a PPP/C Executive, once again saluted the international community – 100 foreign governments, foreign observers, international organisations – that stood by and with Guyana in defending, preserving and protecting its democracy and the ballots of the people.
“Imagine where we would have been today if those miscreants were allowed to pervert the elections. We would have been a pariah State. We would have been blacklisted internationally. Caricom would have expelled [us]; Commonwealth may have done the same thing, the United Nations. It’s horrendous to think what would have happened in Guyana if those miscreants, those perpetrators, were allowed to pursue and execute their plans and their agendas,” the AG contended.
Coming out of the March 2020 electoral debacle, some 32 electoral fraud cases have been filed in the Magistrate’s Court against several former Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) officials and political activists who are accused of being involved in the attempt to manipulate the results of the March 2 polls.
A National Recount, conducted under the auspices of Caricom, revealed that Clairmont Mingo, the former Returning Officer for Region Four – Guyana’s largest voting district – had heavily inflated the figures to give the coalition a victory. However, the recount exercise also confirmed that the Dr Irfaan Ali-led PPP/C won the elections by over 15,000 votes.
Mingo – along with former Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield, former Deputy Chief Elections Officer Roxane Myers, and APNU/AFC activist Carol Smith-Joseph, APNU Executive Volda Lawrence and others – is currently facing electoral fraud charges in the courts.
Some of these charges were filed since 2021 and there have been concerns over the pace of these cases.
As a result, AG Nandlall has disclosed that he requested the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to get an update from the Special Prosecutors on these cases. He reassured citizens that once that report was obtained, the contents would be made public.
“I know the public is impatient… They want an update on the charges… I will make [the report] public, so that you will see where the charges are and why the charges have not been proceeding with the alacrity that you think they should proceed with… because I can’t answer for matters over which I have no control. I can’t direct how these cases are to be done. I can’t direct how they are to be concluded or conducted,” the Attorney General stressed.
Nevertheless, Nandlall pointed out that as Guyana gears up for another electoral cycle – Local Government Elections (LGE) slated for June 12 – the country needed to be on the lookout since many of the players who were involved in the 2020 elections were still around and active on the political scene.
“They are very much here and they are very much in politics, and they are very likely to resume that type of conduct or to repeat that type of conduct come a next election. So, as we approached March 2, let us not only celebrate elections and elections victory… let us reflect on the seriousness of what transpired there, and let us reflect on the strong likelihood of a reoccurrence and pledge that we will work fervently to ensure that that doesn’t occur,” Nandlall implored.
