Chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), retired Justice Claudette Singh on Tuesday voted with government-appointed commissioners to release the documents presented by the APNU+AFC coalition during the recount process for the March 2020 polls which it alleged pointed to fraud.
Government-nominated Commissioner, Sase Gunraj yesterday told Stabroek News that the matter came up for discussion at Tuesday’s statutory meeting.
According to Gunraj, the Opposition Commissioners – Vincent Alexander, Charles Corbin and Desmond Trotman – requested that the matter be discussed before a decision was made. “They vehemently objected to the release of those documents,” he said.
Among the grounds that they provided was that as a constitutional agency GECOM does not have to release the documents and that the matter is one that should be ventilated in the court.
“One of the grounds that they utilized was that the ruling of the Commission previously was that that was a matter for the court and that should be ventilated in the court not at GECOM. However, you would appreciate that there was no application or no request for interrogation of those documents. The request was for a mere provision of those documents,” Gunraj said.
“They also argued that GECOM is not supposed to release those documents for fear of appearing to take the side of one person over the other. However, once more we contradicted that to say that it’s a matter of fairness and these are documents that GECOM has in its possession. GECOM is the sole custodian of an unadulterated version of these documents and as a consequence is the right body to hand them over,” he said.
The Opposition Commissioners also suggested that it is best suited for the request to be made to the agencies who provided the information. “However…some of that information was supplied by the political party itself,” Gunraj said.
After deliberations, Gunraj said Singh ruled in favour of the release of the documents.
The documents ought to have been released by now, he said.
Just over a week ago, Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall had written to Singh requesting the documents APNU+AFC used to claim fraudulent voting at 2020 elections.
In his letter dated August 30, Nandlall said that he was acting on behalf of the government. He added there are media reports in which the APNU+AFC, which formed the government at the time, claimed that it delivered documents containing information that votes were cast on behalf of deceased persons; that the elections were tainted by multiple voting; and that votes were cast for persons who were overseas on voting day.
“These allegations continue to be peddled in the public domain by leaders and representatives of the aforesaid political entity. At the time and until now, the impression conveyed is that these documents and/or data were generated by and obtained from the official lawful repository of the specific information, for example, the Immigration Department, Guyana Police Force and the General Registrar’s Office.
“You will appreciate that these are grave allegations, and as baseless and unfounded as they were proven to be, it is important that the relevant state agency enquires into the source of this information, upon whose directions they were sourced, and perhaps, most importantly, to officially reconfirm their inaccuracy, for the public record. In the circumstances, I hereby request a copy of these documents to initiate this process,” Nandlall said in his letter to Justice Singh.
The documents requested seemingly contain immigration and death records of a number of persons the APNU+AFC alleged that votes were illegally cast for in the elections.
During the five-month-long post-election period, Stabroek News reported a number of instances where the APNU+AFC’s claims of dead or migrated persons voting were discredited by the very people themselves.
