The Donald Ramotar administration was yesterday accused of misusing state resources for elections campaigning and according to Opposition Leader David Granger an official complaint will be made to the Guyana Elections Commission (Gecom).
At an APNU press conference yesterday, Granger and other senior party officials said they have taken note of the PPP’s “dirty campaign” in attempting to win elections.
Asked to respond to reports that the president had used the army sky van to attend a number of meetings in Amerindian villages within the past two weeks, Granger said that the president cannot be using state resources for political party campaigning. He alluded to a previous occasion where India’s Prime Minister appeared before the court charged with using state resources for political campaigning. He said, “If he is going as Minister of Defence, if he is going as president of the country no one can prevent him… but it is clear that since the Babu John declaration the PPP is in clear campaign mode. They have been brushing everything else aside, including local government elections.”
Granger later stated that it has been decided that the party’s chief whip Amna Ally will be the person making the complaint to Gecom about the PPP’s behaviour and their breach of elections practices.
Granger, reading from a prepared statement, said that the PPP has launched a “dirty, divisive and dangerous campaign on the approach of general and regional elections.” He singled out general secretary Clement Rohee who he says has been issuing “ludicrous but libelous attacks on opposition leaders and political parties.”
He noted that the party’s general elections campaign started at the annual commemoration at Babu John in March, during which Rohee stated that persons were growing politically restless and uncomfortable. He quoted Rohee as saying that “only general elections can change the situation.”
According to Granger, since then the party has been “deliberately fomenting constitutional crises in order to vilify the opposition and distract the population from its own sordid record of corruption and mismanagement.”
He charged that the party has been preventing the holding of local government elections and preparing for general and regional elections by indulging in “fear mongering, race baiting, vote buying and lying.”
With respect to fear mongering, Granger made reference to a “scurrilous” PPP press statement dated 26th November in which it was stated that he and shadow finance Minister Carl Greenidge “would unleash vengeance against anyone they perceive to be associated with the PPP and the PPP/C administration… these threats can only be seen as tantamount to the Demerara River flowing red with blood should the APNU and PNC come to power.” The purpose of the statement, Granger said, is to breed fear.
In relation to vote-buying, he contended that the PPP has been “unfairly spending state resources in certain targeted communities in order to win their votes at the forthcoming elections.” He said several ministers have been spending state funds at a phenomenal rate in order to “buy” votes. He noted that the Minister of Local Government and Regional Development unilaterally launched a multi-million dollar ‘Clean-up My Country’ programme; the Minister of Amerindian Affairs has been presenting villages with school uniform material; the Minister of Education waited over six months to start disbursing the $10,000 grant promised to the families of schoolchildren; and the Prime Minister and junior Finance Minister have been lavishing netbooks (laptop computers) in several rural communities.
Granger told the media that among the lies being peddled by the PPP was that murdered Agricola youth Shaquille Grant was a criminal. He noted that Rohee was forced to apologise to the teen’s mother for this “infantile attempt” to link him (Granger) to the criminal underworld.
It was stated that the PPP statement mendaciously went on to claim that “Mr. Granger indicated he will go on a ‘witch hunt’ and through his ‘lynch mob,’ would throw due process out the window.”
“This is a complete falsehood ― a fabrication that was concocted by a sick mind”, Granger stated.
Ally stressed that the ministers are using government vehicles to do political work, which is wrong.
Following the last general elections, the OAS observer mission called for a legal review of the campaign financing framework. It said consideration should be given to the inclusion of a requirement for disclosure of campaign expenditure prior to elections; the establishment of criteria for private and foreign contributions; and instituting public campaign financing.
