The APNU+AFC Coalition continues to push the claim that the PPP is afraid of what is being uncovered in the ongoing national recount of votes which were cast on March 2, 2020 and Amna Ally, a leading figure in the Coalition, Friday went as far as saying if there is evidence that just one person voted in the name of a dead person then that would invalidate the entire elections.
“You don’t have to have 300,000 dead voters. The fact that one dead voted, it does not lend to credible elections and that must be taken into consideration,” Ally declared Friday during an interview hosted by her colleague Cathy Hughes, another APNU+AFC representative.
Ally is the General Secretary of the PNC, the largest party in the Coalition.
“PPP is afraid of what I call a ‘skin-up’ by all these things that are happening right now in the various administrative regions,” Ally said.
But the Coalition has so far failed to present any evidence to back up its mounting claims that persons who were dead and persons who were out of the country voted on March 02.
And statistics from the recount have so far shown that the elections were rigged in favour of APNU+AFC.
This trend was particularly observed in Region 4, where the Returning Officer (RO) for that district, Clairmont Mingo departed from the legally established procedure for tabulation and instead relied on a spreadsheet of unknown origin.
His actions triggered several legal battles which culminated in a national recount.
In roughly 20 of the boxes recounted so far for Region 4, it was discovered that close to 1,500 extra votes were initially handed to the APNU+AFC, while more than 170 were deducted from the PPP.
These statistics were revealed by other party representatives and observers, since both groups are in possession of or have access to the Statements of Poll (SOPs) from the initial count and the Statements of Recount (SORs) from the ongoing recount exercise.
The PPP has made public its SOPs which shows that it has won the elections, but APNU has refused to release theirs despite saying that those in their possession show that they are the winners.
Ally also sought to justify the coalition’s withholding of its SOPs by saying that the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has the official SOPs.
“The official SOPs to be used is SOPs by GECOM. PPP concocted their SOPS to illustrate results that they preconceive as a win for these elections. SOPs from GECOM illustrated that the Coalition has won these elections and these were SOPs confirmed by all 10 ROs,” she said.
However, Ally stayed clear of asking for the SOPs to be released by the elections regulatory body.
Regarding its claims during the recount exercise of the dead and those out of the country voting, Alli said: “We are putting them together now and we are going to put them out – the names of the persons who died.”
In relation to the recount process, which is expected to exceed the 25-day deadline, Ally said that it is “going well so far,” but suggested that the exercise is not geared to illustrate just a numerical outcome, but that it should test the credibility of the elections.
Both the APNU+AFC and its leader, incumbent President David Granger have described the elections as being “free, fair, and credible”.
