The following is an opinion piece by Nigel Hinds, Chairman, Change Guyana
The only question I have for Mr. Stanley Ming is approximately how many Guyanese persons who migrated from Guyana were on Official List of Electors (OLE) and about how many dead Guyanese were on the OLE.
One can infer from Ming’s pronouncements on Benschop Radio 107.1 FM, which were published on May 24, 2020 in Guyana Chronicle under the caption “Bloated OLE was a recipe for disaster” – that the persons on the voters list who migrated from Guyana are not on the OLE. Another inference is that the names of dead Guyanese are not on the voters list.
Of course, every final electoral list in the world has persons who have migrated to other countries and the names of dead people. Walking, then Voting while dead are not considered realistic events; even if such phenomena were possible, the checks and balances at the voting stations, would have stopped the wannabee voters dead in their tracks.
Mr. Ming numerical claims – provide a challenge to untangle; suffice to say that he arrives at 586,000 (837,000 multiply 70%) as the approximate number of persons who should be on the OLE. The OLE produced by Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) and used in the March 2, 2020 Elections allowed for 661,028 electors. Based on Ming’s computation the OLE is overstated by 75,000 (661,000 minus 586,000), with numbers being rounded to the thousandth.
Using Mr. Ming’s math, the APNU-AFC coalition claimed that the election list is bloated by over 200,000 – is an extreme distortion by APNU-AFC. The difference is a minimum of 125,000 (200,000 minus 75,000) representing the minimum amount over bloated by the Coalition and substantially exceeding the swollen numbers of 75,000 inferred by Mr. Ming.
Here we have another member of the intelligentsia in Guyana, being creative with numbers and nullifying logic. In returning to reality, we only have to look at the ruling made by Chief Justice, Roxanne George-Wiltshire on August 14, 2019, when she pointed out that “right to vote and the right to be registered to vote are sacrosanct, …residence requirements from citizens is no longer a qualification for registration”.
Justice George-Wiltshire also highlighted that it is unconstitutional for qualified persons to be removed from the list if they are not in the jurisdiction or not at their residence during the registration exercise and that only deceased persons and those otherwise disqualified under Article 159 (2), (3), or (4) are to be removed. Ming unstudiously overlooked the ruling by Madam Chief Justice and instead purposed his one-eyed computation in a biased and partisan manner, quite like Mingo ignoring the numbers on the Statement of Polls (SOPs) for Region 4.
In addition, Attorney-at-Law, Mr. Nigel Hughes another member, if not leader of Guyana’s intelligentsia, claimed “that the list that existed prior to elections was bloated”. The attorney noted that the Court’s decision that migrants cannot be removed from the National Registrants Data Base (NRDB) and was not in the best interest of Guyana. My question for the honourable Attorney-at-Law is whether GECOM should have ignored the Court’s decision. The recent mathematical observation by Mr. Hughes – that under certain conditions, 33 is not a majority of 65, was in the best interest of APNU-AFC, if not in the best interest of Guyana. Indeed, we Guyanese now live in the epoch of the inexplicable, the incomprehensible and the paranormal; we certainly are not living in evidence or experience-based reality.
The panel on Benschop’s radio program, also included Commissioner Mr. Desmond Trotman. The Commissioner implied that Guyanese eligible to vote, who reside outside of Guyana and deceased Guyanese are- “impurities that exist on the present list.” I have little doubt that Mr. Trotman did not intend to refer to any amount of Guyanese alive or dead, as impurities.
Now more than ever, the deliberative and cunning Vincent Alexander, Commissioner of GECOM, is needed to provide a crumb of common sense, tolerability and thread of logic to the utterances coming from the APNU-AFC Commissioners and some other representatives of APU-AFC.
