The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) yesterday once again protested outside of the Guyana Elections Commission (Gecom) headquarters over its claim that the 2015 general elections were rigged and to call for Chairman Dr Steve Surujbally to go.
The protest, which was led by PPP/C Member of Parliament Neil Kumar, started after 12 pm and saw about 30 supporters bearing placards and chanting, “Who rigged the elections? Gecom! Who must go? Surujbally!”
Some of the placards read, “Cheated, not defeated,” “PPP defends 23 years of gains for Guyanese,” “Steve, it’s time to leave,” and “Surujbally must go, he can’t count properly.”
Kumar told the media that they were protesting because the elections 2015 were rigged and they were demanding a recount.
PPP/C parliamentarian Ganga Persaud had filed a petition in June last year, calling on the court to declare the entire May 11, 2015 general elections process flawed and containing many procedural errors and so many instances of fraudulent and/or suspicious actions that “the results that have been derived from the process cannot be credibly deemed to represent accurately the will of the electorate.”
Persaud had also asked the court to order a recount of all ballots cast in the elections.
Although Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield had moved to the court to have the petition struck out, former acting chief justice Ian Chang had dismissed his application. Lowenfield has since appealed the decision.
Kumar promised that they “would protest all the time. We would up the tempo; we’ll bring more people out and start protesting all over the country.”
He was satisfied with the turnout at the protest and promised that they were “going to keep the pressure on throughout the country in the different regions,” especially where they “had ties in the NDCs.”
The opposition party’s position since the May 11, 2015 general elections is that it has been robbed of votes through a carefully planned rigging process on the part of the APNU+AFC coalition. Local and international observers have, however, declared that the polls were free and fair.
Meanwhile, at the PPP weekly press conference on Monday, General Secretary Clement Rohee said that the party was concerned about Gecom’s decision to share its database including confidential details of registrants with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security.
He said that the justification provided by Surujbally and the commissioners nominated by the APNU+AFC are “spurious” and create “grounds for suspicion.”
Kumar said it was wrong for Gecom to make the database of the elections public and that it had “no right to give it to a ministry. If Surujbally give it to a ministry, then he is giving it to a political party because a political party is in government.”
“It is wrong according to the law…,” he said, while noting that “Gecom was sworn to secrecy that they cannot give out the data.”
When contacted, Gecom Public Relations Officer Tamara Rodney told Stabroek that they were not sharing the database but just names and addresses of parents of children who would be starting nursery and primary schools.
She said too that database of registrants, who are below the age of 18, was not shared and that no ID card numbers would be given out.
She said too that the go ahead was granted by all of the Gecom commissioners, including those nominated by the PPP/C. But when asked, Kumar said that they had objected to it.
In response to the PPP’s claim that the list of registrants was being padded, Rodney said Gecom would embark on a new house-to-house registration next year and that the list would be updated every eight years. This, she said, was a normal procedure and that the list would be valid for every elections.
The PPP has also objected to Gecom accepting late registration birth certificates, presented by applicants who are primarily middle-aged persons, as source documents for registration. Rodney told Stabroek News that Gecom was now “regulating that so that people who were never registered before” would be part of the electoral process. She said too that scrutineers would be monitoring the process and that everything they do with regards to registration and elections “is done with transparency.”
