Attorney General (AG) Anil Nandlall has written the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), seeking information on how private citizens’ data was provided to it by A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) during the controversial 2020 General and Regional Elections.
It is a first step in the direction of an investigation that the AG had announced last week would be held into how immigration and registration data of citizens ended up in the hands of the then ruling APNU/AFC party; data it then submitted to GECOM in an effort to discredit the voters’ list.
According to his letter addressed to GECOM Chairperson, Retired Justice Claudette Singh, Nandlall noted that APNU/AFC delivered to GECOM, documents claiming to show that dead people and persons who were overseas on Election Day, voted at the elections, as well as documents to claim that there were cases of multiple voting.
“These allegations continue to be peddled in the public domain by leaders and representatives of the aforesaid political entity. 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, the Guyana Police Force and the General Registrar’s Office.”
Nandlall noted in his letter that these were grave allegations that proved to be baseless and unfounded. This is especially so since several of the persons who were included in APNU/AFC’s list as dead or migrated voters, actually came forward to dispute that party’s allegations.
“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 public record. In the circumstances, I hereby request a copy of these documents to initiate this process,” Nandlall wrote.
Last week, during an edition of his programme “Issues in the News”, Nandlall had announced that an investigation would be launched into the fact that data which should have been in the custody of the authorities, were used by APNU/AFC to make false and politically charged claims against citizens.
“Perhaps we should have done it before, but it is not too late. These concocted and fabricated allegations continue to be made by that rigging cabal who tried relentlessly to pervert those elections. They manufactured records from the Immigration Department and the GRO office,” the Attorney General had said.
Nandlall had pointed out that back in 2020, when APNU/AFC first made its erroneous claims, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) did investigations of its own. During its investigations, the PPP/C was able to find many of the persons that APNU/AFC claimed were out of the jurisdiction or dead.
In fact, many of these persons came forward to protest against and dispute APNU/AFC’s claims. This publication published several such persons, who had been accused by the then ruling party of being either dead or out of the jurisdiction, when their vote was recorded.
“Well, the Police or the relevant agency will have to investigate and tell the public where that documents came from and who was responsible for compiling it and upon whose directions they were compiled. That will happen very shortly, in a matter of days,” Nandlall had said.
Another frequent point of contention by the APNU/AFC, is how 49 boxes in Better Hope/LBI were missing statutory documents following the elections. According to Nandlall in his show, however, it is on GECOM to investigate this issue.
“Now, as I have established the matter is now within GECOM. Call [GECOM] if [there are any] doubts… is to call Mingo and call Lowenfield…and ask them to come out publicly and contradict me…raise it as a matter for the commission to interrogate because it’s a GECOM issue,” the Legal Affairs Minister had said sternly.
Nandlall had also pointed out that it was the APNU/AFC while in power, who were the custodians of the electoral process and would therefore be better able to answer to the whereabouts of the missing statutory documents, than his party.
