– Harmon says this action will be evidence-based
The APNU+AFC Coalition will file a second election petition soon which is primarily “evidence-based” to support its previous petition as it maintains that the foundation on which the current government was elected is based on fraud.
The Coalition’s first election petition was filed at the High Court on August 31, 2020. It relied strictly on Guyana’s Constitution, the Representation of the People Act (ROPA), the National Assembly (Validity of Elections) Act, and the Elections Laws (Amendment) Act.
However, in an exclusive interview with the Village Voice, Opposition Leader Joseph Harmon said that the second petition will examine all the evidence gathered during the elections and will prove that it was rigged in the favor of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP).
“There are two sets of petitions that we are filing. We filed one already and the next one is going to be filed [soon]. The first one has to deal with straight law, so it is difficult for you to get out of it… the second one is evidence-based. This is the one that will show all of these dead people votes, all the different things that occurred,” he said.
In a previous election report to the Chairperson of the Elections Commission, Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh, the Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield indicated that based on the anomalies and instances of voter impersonation identified in the national recount, the election “does not appear to satisfy the criteria of impartiality, fairness, and compliance with provisions of the Constitution and the ROPA Cap 1:03”.
He told the Chairperson that the data provided in his report concerning the allegations of voter impersonation were validated by the Chief Immigration Officer and the General Registrar’s Office (GROs) Deceased Reports.
However, Justice Singh instructed the CEO to redo his report reflecting every vote counted, suspected as fraudulent or not, for the declaration of the results. Though the national recount Order set out to reconcile ballots issued with ballots cast and to determine the authenticity of the ballots, at the last moment, the Chairperson concluded that the law did not empower the Commission to do so.
After the Court concurred, it left the CEO and the APNU+AFC with their evidence of electoral fraud but nowhere to take it but to Court via an election petition, but only after the elections were declared.
There were three reports from the CEO which showed that the APNU+AFC had the majority of the valid votes cast in the elections but this was overwritten by the stance taken by the Court to uphold only part of the National Recount Order.
“We have a fundamental issue with the foundation on which this present government rests and it is a difficult thing to say to the young people who were a part of that recount process, who were there at the Conference Center for 33 days, checking these boxes as they open, seeing this fraud, and say to them this is a legal and legitimate government,” Harmon said.
He told the Village Voice that his party has solid evidence inclusive of statements of the Chairperson of the Elections Commission acknowledging that the occurrences were fraudulent but that they were out of her control. Both petitions, he said, will be represented by a strong team of local Senior Counsels and international lawyers.
When the time comes for the matters to be settled in the Court, the Opposition Leader said that all eyes will rest on the judiciary and justice must prevail. He cautioned that Guyanese will not accept a ruling that is contrary to law and the Coalition is confident that, if the Court abides by the law, the petitions will be successful.
“Our criminal justice system and our judicial system is under serious scrutiny by citizens because they are seeing rulings going in a certain way but the alternative to a well-organized judicial system is chaos, is street justice,” he said.
“I don’t think that we would want our country to degenerate to such a state and we are hoping and we are trusting that our judicial system, that our judges, understand the point in history where they are right now and if they don’t get this right, that the citizens have been very patient in the face of bad judgments in the Court. But, we are standing at a point of history now that if this doesn’t go right, that the consequences can be very dire for this country.”
