Peoples Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/C), Executive Member, Anil Nandlall, has once again challenged the APNU+AFC coalition to dispute the allegations of fraud being levelled against Returning Officer for District Four, Clairmont Mingo, by producing its Statements of Poll (SoPs) adding that his party; the PPP “would not put out numbers that we cannot vouch for.”
“Just one! Let them put up one!” Nandlall challenged the incumbent coalition.
The Coalition has claimed victory of the March polls, and has stood in support of Mingo’s controversial declarations. But inspite of repeated calls from various stakeholders to release its SoPs on which it is claiming it won the elections, it has not budged.
The National Recount exercise underway at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre (ACCC) to ascertain votes cast on March 2 last has revealed that Mingo inflated the figures for ballots cast in that region by an average of 50 per box in favour of the APNU/AFC.
As recent as yesterday – Day 16 of the recount — Nandlall told media operatives that of the 85 boxes of Region Four ballots recounted, Mingo has been shown to give the coalition, APNU+AFC, 4,415 additional votes.
Compounding the situation, the recount exercise illustrated that in those 85 ballot boxes, the Region Four RO allegedly reduced the votes cast for the PPP/C by 686.
Presenting a case in support of the allegations of fraud against the Region Four RO, Nandlall told media operatives, “When Mingo stopped using the SOPs and produced that spreadsheet, we requested from him an explanation of the origin of that spreadsheet. He never explained where he got it from.”
Nandlall related that RO Mingo in fact said “that he extrapolated it from numbers on the SOPs. So, we said, ‘We need to verify from our SOPs and the SOPs that you have that the numbers correspond on the spreadsheet’.”
According to Nandlall, “He never produced those SOPs…up to now.”
Meanwhile, at the end of Day 16, the recount exercise had completed an additional 88 boxes — the most completed in a single day since the activity commenced on May 6 last at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre.
