The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) did not check to determine if the 172 persons who were out of the country actually voted on Elections Day – as is being claimed by the APNU/AFC coalition.
In fact, the Commission’s Chairperson Justice Claudette Singh did not seek to determine if those individuals actually voted before writing to the Police Commissioner on the issue.
The Office of the Commissioner of Police has responded to GECOM’s request seeking to ascertain whether a list of names of persons supplied by the APNU/AFC were in fact out of the country on Elections Day.
The coalition had supplied the GECOM Chair with a list of some 200 names of persons who they claimed were out of the country on March 2. The Police has since confirmed that 172 of the persons on the listed provided were in fact out of the country on Elections Day.
GECOM’s Public Relations Officer Yolanda Ward has since confirmed however, that the Electoral Body never checked to see whether ballots were issued for the names of persons said to be out of the country on Elections Day.
She told media operatives that the ballot boxes along with the corresponding List of Electors that would document whether ballots were issued, had been resealed in the containers—in the Arthur Chung Conference Centre—and that the checks had not been made.
Meanwhile, with a response from the Police Commissioner, Ward said it is for the Commission to now decide on the way forward, particularly what it will do with the information it has received.
