Coalition refuses to sign Region Two certificate on basis of ‘valid votes’

The representative of the APNU+AFC on Wednesday afternoon refused to sign the District Two certificate after all the ballot boxes were recounted and tabulated simply because the certificate registers the number of “valid votes.” The Coalition representative had a problem with the words “valid votes” because of its arguments, none of which it has presented evidence for, that persons who were either dead or out of the country were ticked off as having voted.

But the Coalition did sign the 105 Statements of Recount which were tabulated to get the totals for the District.

The APNU+AFC’s refusal to sign the certificate does not have any bearing on the results or the certificate and does not invalidate the certificate, Sase Gunraj, a Commissioner of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) told the News Room.

The recount confirmed the first declaration before the recount, which shows that the PPP whipped the Coalition by 11, 445 votes. The Coalition only managed to secure 7, 340 votes while the PPP registered 18, 785.

With the votes cast for the other parties, the total valid votes cast, as recorded on the certificate is 26, 621.

But the Coalition representative refused to sign the certification of the Region 2 results since it contains the words “valid votes”.

“He says there are anomalies in the vote count which has the attention of the commission and will not sign on principle,” Rhoda-Ann Lam of The Citizenship Initiative posted on her Facebook page. Lam is stationed in the Tabulation Centre.

The total number of votes for each party did not show major variations from the previous declarations for Region Two as seen below: 

The certificate was signed off by the Tabulation Supervisor and the District Coordinator.

Once all the ballot boxes are counted for a particular region, a certificate is produced after all the Statements of Recount from each box is tabulated.

The Chief Elections Officer will then use all ten certificates for the ten electoral districts and prepare a report that will determine the winner for a declaration to be made by the Chair of the Commission.