“PPP clutching at straws”
– Harmon says of moves to discredit immigration records; evidence of electoral fraud
DPI, Guyana, Thursday, June 04, 2020
Former Director-General of the Ministry of the Presidency and Campaign Manager and Election Agent for the APNU-AFC, Joseph Harmon today said the opposition PPP is losing the grip on the narrative being fed to its supporters, especially in the face of emerging evidence of electoral fraud.
This, he noted, is seen in the wave of attacks on the character of the Chief Immigration Officer and the records provided of the out-of-the-jurisdiction voters.
During a press briefing earlier today, Harmon said the opposition is going to great lengths to cast doubt on the fact which shows so far over 170 Guyanese were out of the country on March 2, while their names were used at the polls.
“As a tactic, the PPP is now attacking the Immigration Department, the legal body that monitors the movement of people in and out of the country. Here the PPP is clutching at straws. They are trying to impugn the character of the officer in charge of those records and the very records.”
He said the selective extraction of “one or two persons” by the PPP cannot change the fact that a vast number of persons that were not in the country voted on March 2, 2020. He noted that at end of the exercise, the Coalition expects the numbers to be several hundred.
With nine electoral districts already completed, counting agents are now utilising the 12 workstations to recount the more than 300 ballot boxes in the Region Four district. Harmon said as the boxes continue to be opened, fresh instances of fraud are also emerging.
And although the APNU+AFC Coalition Government has written some 16 letters to the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) it still awaits word from the elections body on how it plans to address the irregularities that have affected the credibility of more than 90,000 votes.
Harmon indicated that the Coalition is hoping for a response by Friday, June 5.
“In my last letter to the commission, I addressed some additional issues such as several persons not listed on the OLE, voting at the Corriverton Primary School. Over 162 unused ballots unaccounted for at number 77 village on the Corentyne. Oaths of Identity being used but not in ballot boxes, unused ballots absent from ballot boxes in Region Nine. Further, the Coalition has submitted several lists of migrated voters to GECOM and the immigration department has confirmed close to 90 percent of those,” Harmon related to the media.
He said it is clear that the PPP wants to enforce delays on the pronouncement on these issues.
“You have to remain vigilant. The PPP is again trying to change the narrative to suit their narrow political gain. Every day it is clear. The CARICOM observer mission is at the conference centre every day and is bearing witness first hand to the irregularities coming out of the process.”