Supporters of the coalition, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) will undertake another protest march around the city tomorrow morning as the young supporters of the grouping upped their call for the resignation of the hierarchy of the Guyana Elections Commission.
Youth Coalition for Transformation is a movement which is aimed at uniting all Guyanese, James Bond of the APNU told a gathering of several hundred at the Square of the Revolution last evening. The event was a prayer and vigil session held under the theme, ’A nation in crisis, seeking God’s intervention’. Bond said that the movement will be marching around the city from 8 am tomorrow.
Bond added that the recent General and Regional elections were a wake up call for the country and he argued that youths of the nation must press forward for their voices and opinions to be counted. He said that there have been too many times in the past when the young people were left behind. He said that the country must press forward towards development.
As he prayed for the nation, Bond called for the immediate resignation of GECOM chairman Dr Steve Surujbally and the Chief Election Officer, Gocool Boodoo to loud applause from the audience. Other speakers at the forum also vented similar sentiments and a youth pastor who addressed the gathering noted that the young people of the country “feel cheated tonight”. To this end, he noted that GECOM must be held accountable “for all the despair and sadness our youths felt last week in the days leading up to and when the elections results were declared”.
Bond told the gathering that the youths of the country have awakened and according to him, in the days and weeks to come, the leaders of the country will have to answer to the populace on all stages of governance.
Last evening’s vigil will kick-start a week-long plan of activities of a similar nature in which the young supporters of the party intend to continue to voice their dissatisfaction at the recent elections results.
APNU said after last Monday’s elections that it was seeking the verification of the statements of poll (SOP) as the body noted that there were several discrepancies in the computation of the results, particularly for Region 4.
Efforts by this newspaper yesterday to obtain a comment from the leaders of the coalition last evening on the latest position in relation to the SOPs were futile.
On Friday, hundreds of APNU supporters converged on the Square of the Revolution to show their support for APNU presidential candidate David Granger, who told them that the battle is not over before leading them on a march that ended at the barricades outside the GECOM headquarters, where they “occupied” Main Street at the junction of Urquhart and Lamaha streets. In New Amsterdam, APNU supporters also staged a peaceful picket outside the GECOM office there.
“We are demanding that every single statement of poll be [verified]. We are looking for any whiteout, any scratch out, any erasures,” Granger said. “We are not going to accept those numbers until we verify those numbers,” he added.
APNU Election Agent Joseph Harmon had written Boodoo, prior to the declaration of results, informing that APNU had compelling evidence of serious discrepancies between its statements of poll and those being used for computing the results by GECOM. As a result, Harmon said that APNU would only accept the final declaration of results based on an all-party and GECOM verification process of the statements of poll of regions where discrepancies were found to exist. Harmon said on Friday that APNU had still not received a response from Boodoo.
Boodoo told Stabroek News on Thursday that a verification could be accommodated, but it would be up to GECOM Chairman Dr Surujbally to decide on it. Contacted on Friday on APNU’s demands for verification, GECOM spokesman Vishnu Persaud said that after the official results would have been declared by GECOM, political parties can challenge those results–or any other aspect of the elections that they believe improper–only through an elections petition, in accordance with the Validity of Elections Act.
