The following is an opinion piece by Kit Nascimento, a former Minister under the Peoples National Congress administration.
David Granger, still our country’s serving President, finally came out from behind the shadows on a staged Benschop radio interview to commit himself and his governing party to accepting and embracing their plan to rig the Elections and remain in government illegally.
It was blood curdling to listen to Granger’s contrived deceit as he responded to the questions fed to him by Benschop. When asked for his reaction to the CARICOM Report, he unbelievably and duplicitously, having remained silent on it for days, ignored completely, the Report’s clear and unambiguous confirmation that the Recount had provided a valid basis for the declaration of the results, selectively referring to only those parts of the Report which recommended future revision of the electoral process by GECOM.
Here is what the CARICOM Report said that David Granger chose to ignore:
“Nothing that we witnessed warrants a challenge to the inescapable conclusion that the recount results are acceptable and should constitute the basis of the declaration of the results of the March 02, 2020, elections. Any aggrieved political party has been afforded the right to seek redress before the courts in the form of an election petition”
The Report also said:
“The conduct displayed by some of the observed party agents (APNU/AFC) was totally unacceptable…The numerous requests for information on serial numbers were so bizarre, that on one observed occasion, an APNU/AFC agent was prepared to query serial numbers on the OLE in a Work Station where no one had voted”.
“The Team did not view the objections raised by the APNU/AFC as materially relevant to the recount of the ballot…Moreover, we simply have no evidence as to who were the ultimate beneficiaries of the alleged ‘ghost voting’ and ‘voter impersonation’”.
“The Team does not view the irregularities identified, amounted to sufficient grounds to invalidate the tabulation of the votes at the recount and therefore these irregularities DO NOT constitute sufficient grounds to challenge the integrity of the recount process…We found no intentional miscounting of the ballots which would constitute an election fraud necessitating further action”.
David Granger’s deliberate distortion in his presentation of the CARICOM Report last night was an insult to the work and integrity of the GECOM officials who dedicated their time and safety to come to Guyana and affront to the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley who made all of this possible.
David Granger also continued his sanctimonious claim that he has not and would not interfere in the work of GECOM, but he did just that when he insisted that the discredited and unauthorized Lowenfield report must be accepted by the Chairman of the Elections Commission, in effect, seeking to direct the GECOM Chairman as to what she must or must not do.
It is pellucid that David Granger intends to remain in office regardless of the expressed will of the people and regardless of the declaration of GECOM, apparently secure in the belief that he has the security forces to sustain him. In these circumstances, it becomes imperative that the Commissioner of Police and the newly appointed Chief of Staff and those under their command honour their pledge to which they are sworn under the Constitution.
