Guyana’s Ruling Party Claims Opposition On Campaign To Bombard International Community About Election Results

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, June 10, 2020 (CMC) – The ruling coalition — A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC) — is accusing the main opposition, the People’s Progressive Party /Civic (PPP/C), of “bombarding” the international community with claims that it has won the disputed March 2 general elections.

In a lengthy statement, sent to regional and international media outlets, the APNU+AFC said that the just-concluded re-count of ballots, cast in the elections, and observed by a three-member team from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and other observers, had unearthed significant irregularities and anomalies, bringing into question the validity of the polls.

The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) had conducted the re-count exercise that ended on Sunday, and which showed that the PPP/C had, unofficially, won the elections, by a margin of 15,416 votes.

But in its statement, the APNU+AFC said that “the Guyana Elections Commission, the only legal authority on elections in Guyana, has not declared a winner.

“Currently the international media and the Diaspora have been bombarded with claims by the PPP that it has won the March 2, 2020, General and Regional Elections.  The evidence, however, is pointing to a well-planned and orchestrated scheme, from region one to ten, to steal the election,” the coalition said in its statement.

It added “these elections are far from credible, and the Guyanese people deserve better. We await the decision from GECOM on these fraudulent elections”.

The APNU+AFC said that the re-count exercise had resulted in “some amazing discrepancies and outright fraudulent activities that would have caused concerns in any jurisdiction, which prides itself on a democratic process of one-man, one-vote”.

“It is clear, from the discoveries, that there was an organized plan of vandalism on the systems at GECOM, at different layers of the organizations,” the APNU said, claiming that “from district 1 to 10, the ongoing process has unearthed a plethora of fraud, illegal activities, malfeasance, and outright corruption, which have put the legitimacy of the Guyanese election in question”.