More instances of electoral fraud expected from ongoing national recount- Harmon
—says Coalition remains confident of victory.
DPI, Guyana, Monday, May 25, 2020
As the national recount of the ballots from the March 2, General and Regional Elections moves toward completion, the APNU+AFC Coalition said it is confident that much more instances of electoral fraud will be discovered.
While confident of its victory at the polls, the Coalition says that the trend of the discrepancies being uncovered, show a calculated plan by the opposition PPP to cheat Guyanese out of a duly elected government.
Former Director-General of the Ministry of the Presidency Joseph Harmon said a review of over 600 ballot boxes by May 22, found “qualitative irregularities” in some 86,387 votes.
Those irregularities include illegal voting (dead and migrated voters) missing poll books, and unsigned Affidavits of Identity among others. Those, he said, point to a systematic undermining of the Guyana Elections Commission’s (GECOM) process and fraud on the Guyanese population.
“Our investigations have revealed that the electoral theft has been unravelling and over 86,000 votes cannot be accounted for. This goes directly to the credibility of the elections. The unaccounted votes are evidence of a fraudulent attempt to suppress the will of the majority of the Guyanese people who voted for the APNU+AFC. We anticipate that we will find more of these anomalies and will continue to highlight them,” he said on a live broadcast.
During the ongoing national recount, agents detected a specific number was on several counterfoils. Harmon said this raises the question of whether there were bogus ballots printed and, if so, how widespread is that phenomenon.
Agents have also found that the wrong lists were in wrong ballot boxes. He explained that documents for all ballot boxes are placed inside those boxes and sealed at the end of every count. However, for this “mix-up” to happen he suggested, “some hand had to have gone into those boxes after they were sealed and mixed up the lists.”
Another discrepancy is the discovery of ballot papers for one region, being in another. Harmon noted that the regions have different colour coding for their ballots. So, it was surprising that ballots were found in regions that they were not supposed to be.
“We are looking at a process that is caught in unresolved issues. For years, we know that the PPP/C has been stealing your votes, your democratic right to elect a president, a government that will govern all and not just a few. The evidence being unearthed is as clear as day”
The issue of the unstamped discipline services ballots remains a disturbing one, evoking feelings of disgust from several ranks, Harmon said.
Counting agents have discovered that on numerous occasions, the disciplined services ballots were not stamped and deemed invalid. The Coalition has called on GECOM to ensure that the votes of the discipline services are counted.
“It was clear that the majority of the disciplined services were in support of the APNU+AFC and it would appear as it was a calculated effort to ensure that those votes, that they knew would come our way, would be deemed invalid,” he said.
“From the trends, we have noted, we expect to uncover more instances of fraud by the end of this process. But make no mistake, the APNU+AFC Coalition has been and remains confident that we were successful at the polls. We must, however, stay focused on the validity of each vote, which gives credibility to the process. We cannot allow electoral fraud by the PPP to prevail over our democratic process.” Harmon stated.