GECOM is not a trial body, cannot investigate claims that names of dead, migrated used to vote – Ramkarran

The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) is not designed as an evidentiary institution or as a trial body and therefore cannot collect evidence or investigate claims that persons who are dead or have migrated were marked as having voted in the March 2 elections, Ralph Ramkarran, former Speaker of the National Assembly said Sunday.

Ramkarran, a legal giant in Guyana who led a constitutional reform process at the turn of the century, said that all GECOM can do when those objections are made, is to acknowledge it with a “thank you.”

Such matters belong to an elections petition, he said after touring the Arthur Chung Conference Center where the national vote recount is taking place.

Ramkarran, presidential candidate of A New and United Guyana ANUG), said that all the objections are serving to do at this time is to slow down the recount process, which he described as tedious.

He congratulated the staff of GECOM, political party agents and observers for carrying out the “painstaking” process in a meticulous way.

The incumbent APNU+AFC was defeated in a No Confidence motion one and a half year ago, but has held on to power through a series of legal challenges until the caretaker President called elections.

They have been coming up with long lists of persons it claims are either dead or migrated but are marked off as having voted.

All the other parties have argued that with the presence of APNU+AFC’s own agents, GECOM staff and observers, it would have been near impossible for persons to impersonate thousands of persons who were either dead or migrated on elections day.

APNU+AFC has not presented any evidence to back up its claims but said it will present such evidence to GECOM.

APNU+AFC has claimed it won the elections but has refused to present the copies of the Statements of Poll it has in its possession to show how it won the elections.

The recount process has so far shown that there was clear electoral fraud in District Four, with the numbers systematically bumped up in order to give APNU+AFC a victory.