Efforts by the Guyana Police Force and Director of Public Prosecutions, at the engineering of the political directorate, to charge officials of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) are seen by a significant section of society as a political stunt.
Only those who refuse to accept the truth would ignore that the 2020 election results are badly tainted. Some have argued because of the massive fraud exposed during the recount the election should have been cancelled (or not declared) and a political arrangement made between the two major political forces to govern in the meantime as the citizens return to the poll with a sanitised Voters List, given it size of approximately 660,000 electors in population of approximately 750,000.
Less than a month since GECOM made a declaration, what some thought during the election saga were idle threats by the PPP/C to jail GECOM staff, public servants and their family who helped the Coalition as well as marking the face of policewomen to put them out of a job, were obviously not empty threats. There is evidence of efforts to do exactly that. Criminal charges thus far have been brought against GECOM staffers-Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield, Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo, Carolyn Mikhaik Duncan, Michelle Miller and Sheffern February-and People’s National Congress Chairwoman Volda Lawrence.
Those who seek to use the Court to make good on their threats are ignoring that people are not fooled. It is not lost on society that the efforts to go after the named persons have seen no effort to charge the Presiding Officers and Returning Officers of the lower East Coast Demerara, where more than 40 ballot boxes were found with no statutory documents. It is not lost on society that this is a stronghold of the PPP/C and the government seemingly has no interest in having the Police conduct an investigation in this part of Region Four.
It is not lost on the honest in our midst that during the recount process evidence revealed people voted without any form of identification, oaths of identity were missing, there were more votes than electors in some ballot boxes, to name some of the hundreds of anomalies unearthed.
People are not fooled. They know this is a political stunt to charge a selective few with the intent of creating a smokescreen to divert attention from the massive fraud unearthed and the credibility of election results that has resulted in a change in government. Undoubtedly fraud is fraud. No decent society would have supported or its election authority declared any result knowing full well they are fraudulent votes without taking them away from the final count. No progressive society will want to associate with blatantly fraudulent count as expression of the will of the people.
It is left to be seen if an Election Petition will be filed which Village Voice sees as fitting to bring a final and legal outcome or whether the will of the people was truly ascertained as determined by the declared results. It is left to be seen if the judiciary will respect the electoral laws and affirm the integrity of the vote.
