Opposition coalition A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) yesterday announced that it found misconduct and illegal acts in the holding of last year’s general elections, and said there was no reliable basis to determine who won the presidency.
Its findings, based on its independent physical verification of the Statements of Poll (SOPs) coming out of the November 28, 2011 elections, included that there was abuse of private residences used as polling stations to inflate the votes counted for the PPP/C, whose candidate Donald Ramotar was declared the president based on the results. APNU and the AFC, meanwhile, control the 65-member National Assembly with a one-seat majority over the PPP/C.
At a press conference held at the new Office of the Leader of the Opposition on Hadfield Street yesterday, APNU representatives also suggested the complicity of the Guyana Elections Com-mission (Gecom) in misconduct.
An examining team that APNU put together worked with Gecom from January 23 to February 20, during which there were five meetings to review the physical copies of the SOPs, after APNU voiced its dissatisfaction with the electronic copies that Gecom had provided earlier. The examination found that a final list of polling stations was not provided to political parties by Gecom. “Gecom was unable to produce a list of polling stations that were changed or consolidated in the five days prior to elections,” APNU said in a PowerPoint presentation on the verification results.
It found too that votes on the SOPs did not add up to the Gecom’s gazetted results.
“We believe that fundamental breaches of the stated policies and procedures of Gecom occurred, along with misconduct and illegal actions by Gecom representatives in the managing of the Guyana National Elections held on November 28, 2011 [do] not provide a reliable basis to determine who won the presidency,” the APNU team of examiners concluded.
They found that 68 per cent of all private residences used as polling stations across Guyana were located in Region 4, with the PPP/C winning 52 per cent of the votes cast at these residences. Further, the examination found that the PPP/C won 75 per cent of the votes at private residences used as polling stations across the country, in contrast to the 49 per cent of votes won by the ruling party at regular polling stations across the country.
The team said that in Region Four, valid votes for private residences totalled 36,886; with APNU gaining 15,572 or 42 per cent; PPP/C 19,011 or 52 per cent; AFC with 2,264 or 6 per cent; and TUF 0.1 per cent.
According to APNU, Deputy Returning Officers prepared several SOPs but these had no signatures from Presiding Officers or agents. These were submitted by Gecom on compact disc to the political parties with the assurance that the SOPs represented original copies.
The examination also revealed multiple instances of one individual writing up several SOPs for different polling stations at different locations, and that several SOPs had forged signatures, particularly in regions Three and Four.
It said too that among eligible voters, valid votes were 72 per cent while vote percentage at private residences averaged 75 per cent.
“An extract from the Statements of Poll in Good Hope showed the private residence of Oodwalack Prashad with ballot boxes 4,633 and 4,634 mired in forgeries and illegible data. Of the 360 valid votes, over 99 per cent of the votes were for the PPP,” the presentation said.
Complicit
Speaking at the press conference, Nigel Hinds, who performed the verification together with Malcolm Harripaul and George Vaughn and others, said: “Our prevailing take away from the examination of the SOPs among other key points is that there were multiple instances of misconduct, malpractice, and document falsification.
“The preparation of the SOPs was based on copies that were not legible. These SOPs were then used to tabulate the final count, and if they are not legible then what goes into the final count is not legible.
“How can you run and manage an election when the parties do not know what the final list is, where the polling stations are located and in effect we cannot coordinate our team to monitor the process,” he added, noting that while the inaccuracies might not appear significant, given the system used to determine regional and top up seats, a mere five votes could determine who won a region, while 300 votes could determine another.
“The cornerstone in the team’s opinion is that private residences were abused and Gecom was largely complicit in that process,” he said. “You could see the significant swing that the use of private residences had and how it favoured a particular party. We are not pointing any fingers at that party, our issue is the failure of Gecom to properly administer and conduct the elections, which is their core mandate,” said Hinds, adding that the use of private residences allowed the PPP/C to impact the numbers in a “significant” way.
“Gecom has failed. I have gone through about 15 points and [they have] failed in those areas,” he said, adding that there are many more breaches discovered. “When you take all the foregoing into consideration, it would be unreasonable for someone who has analysed the facts to come to the conclusion that after all of these flaws, misconduct, malpractice and misrepresentation that you can now elect a President and allocate seats fairly out of that,” Hinds said.
Hinds noted that Gecom has gazetted a total of 342,236 votes and the actual results based on the party numbers from the SOPs that Gecom had in its possession amounts to 341,940 votes, for a difference of 296 votes. “A lot of it points back to Gecom and the processes they used to validate, verify and ascertain the correctness of the information,” he said.
“The report screams out for some action on the part of Gecom,” said Joseph Harmon, APNU’s Elections Agent. “It basically says that Dr [Steve] Surujbally and Mr Gocool Boodoo are in capable of administering free and fair elections in this country. If you cannot add up 341,000 votes, what are you saying? I believe that Gecom has taken a very simple system as required by the Representation of the People’s Act and complicated it. Why should we call on them [to step down]? Both [Surujbally and Boodoo] should do the honourable thing and resign,” he added.
APNU also called on the local observer group, the Electoral Affairs Bureau (EAB), to release its findings. “They said that they were going to make their report public by the end of February. “It is unusual that we are [coming to the end] of March and we haven’t seen the EAB report yet,” said Harmon. “I think it will be an important report for you to look it to be able to cross-reference what we are saying here,” he said.
