Political commentator and attorney-at-law Christopher Ram says it appears as though businessman Stanley Ming is being recruited to peddle the APNU/AFC’s attempt to overturn the 2020 elections.
According to Ram, this is something that can have violent consequences, as have occurred in Guyana’s past, particularly at the 1997 elections.
“…Joining in the attempt to overthrow the elections is dangerous, dishonest and irresponsible. We’ve had this situation in 1997. If there is unrest and worse, sparked by the narrative of the APNU/AFC (A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change) that the PPP/C (People’s Progressive Party/Civic) rigged the elections, I hope that my friend Stanley Ming would be prepared to come out publicly and claim ownership of consequences, if only indirectly,” Ram contended during a televised programme hosted by Kit Nascimento on Wednesday.
The political activist’s statement comes on the heels of Ming, a former Member of Parliament (MP) for the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) – the leading party in the APNU fraction of the Coalition — stating during a recent broadcast programme that the Official List of Electors (OLE) that was used to conduct the March 2 elections was a “recipe for chaos”, since it contained some 660,000 electorates when Guyana’s population is about 750,000.
However, Ram lambasted the popular businessman for attempting to stir up mischief during the current prolonged electoral process, pointed out that it is dangerous to conflate the two.
“Stanley Ming’s ignorance, oversight, dishonest attempt to conflate the Official List of Electors with population; that’s what he’s doing… It’s our worldwide population that has found itself onto registration [which includes Guyanese who have registered but are living overseas]… The danger with what Stanley is doing, he’s conflating the two, and that is dishonest; that’s unforgiveable… I think Stanley has been very dishonest in that regard, and he ought to correct himself,” Ram asserted.
While it is the law for Guyanese who die here to be removed from the list once it is recorded with the Registrar, Ram explained that the same does not apply for Guyanese who die overseas.
According to Ram, with the businessman’s omissions in his analysis, he is guilty of not providing the “whole truth”.
He went on to say that in his attempt to discredit the elections, Ming is focusing on the list, and not on the voting. However, Ram explained that while the voters’ list was high, voting patterns at the recent elections have not significantly increased.
“I think he has selected information that is dangerous,” Ram posited.
Moreover, Ram, a chartered accountant who also shares a cordial relationship with the prominent businessman, called him out over his duplicitous stance on the contentious electoral process, especially regarding his silence on embattled Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo’s “most blatant, bizarre and barefaced electoral fraud”.
The ongoing National Recount has revealed that RO Mingo had heavily inflated figures in favour of the APNU/AFC Coalition to give the party a landslide lead over the Opposition PPP/C.
Since this fraud has been unearthed, the Coalition has been changing its narrative, claiming now that votes were cast in the names of dead and migrated persons. However, it is constantly being proved that many of the persons whom the APNU/AFC is claiming were not in the jurisdiction and their votes cannot be valid were in fact in the country and did vote on March 2.
