Recalling the events leading up to, during and after the March 2020 General and Regional Elections, Attorney General Anil Nandlall, SC, has cautioned that Guyanese need to be vigilant against a reoccurrence of what transpired four years ago especially with the upcoming 2025 polls.
During a recent appearance on a programme, Nandlall reflected on the August 2, 2020 swearing-in of President Dr Irfaan Ali and the declaration of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) as the victor following the blatant attempts by the then A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) coalition regime to rig the results of the March 2, 2020 elections.
Describing it as a historic struggle in contemporary history, Nandlall said he could not recall any elections that were embroiled in such controversy manufactured by one side in their relentless pursuit to falsify the results of an election. Moreover, he noted that there was no election that ever took five months to tabulate the votes and declare the results.
With Guyana preparing to once again head to the polls towards the end of next year, the Attorney General warned that Guyanese must be vigilant against such actions being played out again.
“We all played a role and we all made sacrifices and we all exposed ourselves to great perils in ensuring that this beautiful thing called democracy was protected and preserved…
“And the people of Guyana… they played a magnificent role [in 2020] and not one moment must they think that it cannot happen again. That is why they must always be alive to the possibility of a reoccurrence and be vigilant and be ready to stand up with even greater might and greater force if it is to unfold once again,” he stressed.
Nandlall went on to remind that many of the intellectual authors of the attempts to steal the ballots are still around and could very well attempt to do the same once more.
“Those who authored and co-authored this design to steal ballots of electoral are very much around and they are prepared to do it again. Look at their own internal elections. They are stealing from themselves. They are defrauding themselves. You think they will not defraud you – the Guyanese voters?” he asked.
AG Nandlall recalled that the machinations to rig the 2020 elections started since 2017 with the appointment of Justice James Patterson, who was handpicked by then President David Granger as the Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM). That appointment was eventually scrapped after the then Opposition party, PPP/C, moved to the courts to successfully challenge it.
Following a series of other events that were also thwarted, the coalition Government was eventually toppled by an Opposition-sponsored No-Confidence Motion in December 2018 but went on to squat in office for another year before finally announcing a date for elections.
“That was the build-up [to the March 2, 2020 elections]… but they were being thwarted all along… Imagine if we were not vigilant and we were not resilient and we were not tactful and we were not ready to challenge, what would’ve happened,” the Attorney General questioned.
He added that even after the election date was announced, the machinations did not stop and continued leading up to, on Election Day and afterwards.
In fact, he recalled that on polling day, he was accused by two senior members of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) – the largest party in the coalition – of sharing out identification (ID) cards – a claim that was intended to rile up people.
“Why would I need to share out ID cards on Election Day? …The day when the international spotlight is on the Guyanese community more than any other day is the day that I would see fit to share out ID card and why would I share out ID cards? ID card is not an indispensable requirement to vote. If a person doesn’t have an ID card, he can still vote,” Nandlall argued.
The situation four years ago escalated in the days after Election Day when the votes were being tabulated for Region Four – Guyana’s largest voting district. Embattled Returning Officer for District Four, Clairmont Mingo, shot into the limelight after he switched from using the Statements of Poll (SoPs) to using a questionable spreadsheet. This was objected to by the various political parties that contested the elections since the numbers on the spreadsheet did not correspond with the SoPs.
A series of court challenges subsequently ensued, but this did not deter the efforts to derail the elections.
“This time they used a projector and a bedsheet to project the Statements of Poll… From spreadsheet now to bedsheet, and the numbers were so small you couldn’t see what they were projecting. So, it was a farce,” the AG noted.
Eventually, following the intervention of Leaders in the Caribbean Community (Caricom), President David Granger agreed to a national recount, but even this process, Nandlall recounted, was not without hiccups.
However, democracy prevailed and five months after Guyanese went to the polls, the PPP/C was declared winner of the 2020 elections on August 2, paving the way for President Ali to be sworn into office.
AG Nandlall underscored that democracy is the life blood of a nation: “Guyana suffered as a nation from a lack of democracy for 28 years… We must never endure that again… The economy is transforming and Guyana is transforming, even the greatest critic of this government will tell you that. Imagine if democracy was not allowed to prevail, where we would have been?”
During the five-month deadlock, the United States had issued sanctions against individuals “responsible for or complicit in undermining democracy in Guyana”. Several other Western nations had indicated that they too were contemplating similar actions and even Caricom had decided to treat Guyana a certain way.
“This is a global village that we live in. There is no one country that can survive international sanctions. None of the investors that you’re seeing now would’ve been here. None of the loans that we’ve accessed we would’ve been able to access. We would not have had peace and security in the country, because the Guyanese population had made it clear that they are not going to live under undemocratic rule,” Nandlall posited.
Mingo, along with former Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield, his former Deputy Roxanne Myers, former People’s National Congress/Reform (PNCR) Chairperson Volda Lawrence, PNCR activist Carol Smith-Joseph, and GECOM employees Sheffern February, Enrique Livan, Michelle Miller and Denise Babb-Cummings, are currently facing 28 charges relating to electoral fraud.
