Protests at Lusignan and Mon Repos on the East Coast Demerara (ECD) erupted into violence and three persons were injured after being shot by pellets fired by the police as hundreds of persons gathered to demonstrate against what they claimed was the “rigging” of Monday’s elections.
Police also fired teargas as protesters set fires, blocked roads, harassed motorists and others, and taunted the law enforcement agents. The protests were among several that were held around the country as supporters of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) heeded the call of their leaders to protest. Protests were also held in Regions Two, Three, Four, Five and Six yesterday. As the situation escalated and tensions ran high yesterday, some high-ranking party members arrived and urged their supporters to return home, but they were not heeded.
Both the PPP and APNU+AFC have claimed victory following Monday’s general and regional elections though the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has yet to officially declare a victor. There are concerns regarding the verification of the Region Four votes and how this will be resolved remains to be seen. The PPP has obtained several court orders, which the government is seeking to have dismissed today. International observers have also called for a verification of the votes to be done in accordance with the law.
On the ECD yesterday, the protests began at Lusignan but it was at Mon Repos that the situation escalated quickly.
At around 4pm, scores of residents from Mon Repos joined the protest. The agitated residents had the police on their toes as they lit several heaps of tyres on fire at different points on the road.
Some protesters also chased and threatened reporters from the Guyana Chronicle after claiming that the media house does not report accurately. They also said that Nightly News, Channel 65 and the Stabroek News will not be allowed in their village.
The residents said they were protesting GECOM’s Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo’s declaration of unverified regional results from Monday’s polls. His declaration showed the APNU+AFC coalition in the lead.
There was a large police presence but residents refused to obey their orders, adding to the already tense atmosphere.
Pellets
The police eventually resorted to throwing tear gas into the air to disperse the crowd. As the police rushed into the community, they shouted, “Go home! Go home! Go home!” This was followed by the hurling of the tear gas canister into the air.
At this point, some residents who had congregated on the railway embankment road, began to block the carriageway with an old utility post and large rocks. Minibuses and cars that were traversing along the thoroughfare at the time had to proceed with caution.
While they were doing this, police arrested one man who was placing some items on the roadway. This created an uproar among the residents gathered there. After the police released the tear gas, persons ran into side streets and to their homes.
Just after the residents were cleared off the road, law enforcement agents, after being tipped off, intercepted a gang of young men, who appeared to be between the ages of 14 and 17, and seized several large knives. The knives were found tucked in the waists of some of the boys and on their bicycles.
Meanwhile, three persons were injured by pellets after the police fired shots to get another group of persons off the main public road. The men were rushed to the hospital by public-spirited citizens. The trio sustained injuries to their feet. They were by the market on the main public road when the shot was fired. After firing a warning shot, police threw more tear gas canisters into the air.
By this time, PPP Central Committee members Priya Manickchand and Dr Vindhya Persaud had arrived and urged the protesters to go home. The duo had been on their way to speak with Lusignan residents but stopped after they saw the police and the crowd on the road at Mon Repos.
As they interacted with residents, the senior PPP leaders, while expressing gratitude for their demonstration at this crucial time, urged residents to stay at home.
Police arrested several persons who they believed played a part in starting fires on the road.
Firefighters were seen putting out fires set between Lusignan and Mon Repos, while some police officers were observed breaking up unlit heaps of tyres. Residents also poured oil and moved stalls from the market onto the thoroughfare as part of their protest.
Aggravated
Meantime, at Lusignan, the protest, which was planned to be “peaceful”, escalated as the number of protesters increased. Among the major issues raised by the protesters was GECOM’s actions during the electoral process and their main request was for a verification of the votes for Region Four and an official release of the results.
The residents, many of whom were dressed in black and white attire to “stand up” for democracy, chanted, “Granger must go.” They carried placards which read, ‘International sanctions are coming’, ‘We need a recount’, ‘The rule of law must be followed’, ‘Our voices must be heard,’ and ‘Democracy must prevail’.
The situation escalated as residents blocked the roadway with tyres and utility poles. They remained on the roadway for almost four hours despites pleas by several PPP officials including Anil Nandlall, Sheila Mathura and Commissioner of the Integrity Commission Pandit Rabindranath Persaud, for a return to normalcy.
According to Persaud, residents were aggravated because transparency was not exhibited by GECOM. “The people had voted. They wanted to make sure that their voted has been counted and they want to know whether who win and who lost. The election hasn’t been legitimate and so I am supportive of their views and how they are expressing their views because we cannot allow ourselves to be dragged down into the sense of delusion,” he said.
He claimed that the actions of the people were as a result of the number of “suspicious” activities demonstrated by GECOM throughout the electoral process. “We have seen so many activities, we have seen so many things that has aroused suspicion, for example, the illness of the RO [Returning Officer], the delaying of the counting, the tabulations which were incorrect, the spreadsheet which was not desired to be there. So many things have gone wrong so it must arouse a suspicion of the ordinary people. If the intellectuals are being suspicious, what about the ordinary people? So the ordinary people, they are expressing their views and what they are doing here, their demonstration…It is not violent. It is not violent,” Persaud argued.
He said that the people are not going to accept the current situation, moreso since they have the support of the international observers.
Meanwhile, Nandlall assured the protestors that the party is doing “everything” in an effort to fix the situation. “We are trying everything possible to get the verification process completed by the returning officer or the deputy and to have the electoral process restored to normalcy,” he said.
Nandlall told the protestors that the PPP has been engaging the international community. “We are speaking to Washington, we are speaking to the United Kingdom, we are speaking to Canada, we are speaking to the entire Commonwealth and Caribbean. We have the support, we have the full support of the international community. We have the full support of the local organisations in this country, the private sector, the labour movement, the religious organisations are all on the side of democracy,” he claimed. “This is not only a PPP issue but this is a countrywide issue,” he said, adding that Guyanese are offended and many persons are working to get justice.
The former Attorney General told the protestors that the party has approached the courts and has been granted the relevant documents to prevent any illegal movement. “We went to the court and we got injunction orders telling the RO to do the verification. We have orders restraining GECOM from swearing in, from declaring the final results. It is GECOM that must declare the final results, not [Chief Election Officer Keith] Lowenfield….only they can declare the results, only after the results are declared then there can be a swearing in of everyone and before the results are declared, the Region Four [votes] must [be verified]. It must verify; that is a non-negotiable position. We have a court order that protects the process as well,” Nandlall said.
He blamed GECOM for what is currently happen in the country and argued that the elections body head Claudette Singh is responsible for everything that goes wrong.
Heed
According to the PPP’s representatives, they showed up in an effort to “calm” the protestors. However, the protestors did not heed their calls.
Nandlall pleaded with the residents to remain calm and remove from the roadway. However, they responded in the negative. “We are not going to move, we want our democratic rights…We are not moving. Granger must move. Remove Granger,” they chanted.
Prior to this, Pandit Haresh Tiwari had called on the residents to return to their homes in an effort to avoid any form of violence.
“We all have to quietly go home now. We go play into the hands ah the police. They gon shoot we and that will cause problem,” he said. The protesters did not listen and instead vented their anger to him. “If anything goes wrong here today, Granger will use that and use his executive power and involve the army and if he becomes the next president, we cannot allow it. We got to go home. I am begging y’all, leh we go home,” Tiwari said.
However, the protesters maintained that they were not going to move.
Meanwhile, Mathura said that she also interacted with the protestors and they related to her that their actions was the only way for them to get their voices heard. “The only thing that this crowd has so far done is that they blocked the road and when I went myself and I spoke with the people and I said to them that this is something that they shouldn’t do. They said to me very clearly this is only one of the ways that they will be recognised or noticed; that they are serious about what they mean by saying, ‘we want democracy, we want our votes counted and if we don’t do this nobody is going to listen to us’,” Mathura said.
The protest began just after midday yesterday with hundreds of PPP supporters congregating on the public road in the vicinity of the Lusignan market tarmac.
They chanted for their votes to be recounted and for incumbent President David Granger to go. They held signs with messages such as, ‘Our votes need to be counted’, ‘Save our democracy, count our votes’.
Throughout the protest, the police kept asking persons to stay off the public thoroughfare but the protesters ignored the request and moved to take over the entire four lanes of the road.
Traffic had to be diverted from the main public road onto the railway embankment, as persons flowed on to the road and used logs that were lying on the parapet for utility purposes, to block the carriageway.
At the start of the protest, the southern carriageway was opened to traffic but the protestors decided to block the entire road and stopped some vehicles from passing.
Large trucks that were transporting bags of paddy were at one point blocked by protestors. It took several others who were on the protest line to persuade their fellow protesters to desist from blocking the trucks. In one instance, a cyclist stopped in front of a truck, preventing it from moving. It took approximately five minutes to convince the cyclist and the police to move from the road way. By this point, the traffic was diverted to the Railway Embankment road.
Throughout the protest, police made futile attempts to prevent the crowd from flowing onto the entire thoroughfare. As the police walked by within the crowd, they were heckled by protestors and many questioned why they could not occupy the road.
The police’s riot squad also showed up and took up their position but the crowd remained rowdy and sometime after the squad packed up and left.
The protest lasted for approximately four hours and it was not until police arrived on the scene with teargas after the protestors began burning tyres on the road, that protestors went home. Teargas was thrown into the air, resulting in the crowd running for safety and many returned home while other rushed into the streets of Lusignan and sought cover.
When this publication visited the scene, the road was cleared and reopened to traffic but pockets of persons, mainly residents of the community, stood on the parapets of the road and were engaged in conversations..
The debris from the tyres that were burnt, along with broken bottles, were left behind.
