(Demerara Waves)The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) team that scrutinised the recount of the more than 460,000 valid votes cast says the March 2, 2020 general and regional elections reflected the choice of the electorate in who should run the affairs of Guyana for the next five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOverall, while we acknowledge that there were some defects in the recount of the March 2, 2020 votes cast for the general and regional elections in Guyana, the Team did not witness anything which would render the recount and by extension the casting if the ballot on March 2 so grievously deficient procedurally or technically (despite some irregularities) or sufficiently deficient to have thwarted the will of the people and consequently preventing the election results and its declaration by GECOM from from reflecting the will of the voters,\u201d the team said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The report made it clear that the results from the recount should be used by GECOM to declare the results of the elections that pitted the country\u2019s two major political parties \u2013 the People\u2019s National Congress Reform led coalition of A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) and the People\u2019s Progressive Party (PPP) \u2013 against each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDespite our concerns, nothing that we witnessed warrants a challenge to the inescapable conclusion that the recount results are acceptable and should constitute the basis for the declaration of the results of the March 2, 2020 elections. Any aggrieved political party has been afforded the right to seek redress before the courts in the form of an election petition,\u201d the report states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Up to Sunday, the President appeared adamant that the PPP had engineered widespread electoral fraud by using a padded voters\u2019 list. Based on the recount of the 460,352 valid votes cast, APNU+AFC got 217,920 and the PPP 233,336. At the same time, he recalled calling for a CARICOM-scrutinised recount to determine whether there was fraud. \u201cI participated in a process to find out whether there was fraud voting and I din\u2019t think you could have asked a Head of State to do more,\u201d he said. He added that operationally , legally and politically, he said the fraudulent nature was to have been determined by GECOM and the CARICOM recount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If Chief Elections Officer, Keith Lowenfield\u2019s initial report, which mirrors APNU+AFC\u2019s concerns, is anything to go by, it would mean the People\u2019s Progressive Party (PPP) would get 56,627 votes and A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) will get 125,010 and the remainder going to several small parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The three \u2018joinder\u2019 parties- A New and United Guyana (ANUG), Liberty and Justice Party (LJP) and The New Movement (TNM) got a total of 5,214\u202c votes, but Lowenfield\u2019s extraction of votes not affected gives the trio a total of 1,650. LJP got no votes in Regions One and Four in the CEO\u2019s figures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
President David Granger said the Lowenfield and CARICOM reports should be considered by GECOM. \u201cI expect that those numbers will be taken into consideration in the observation report , both at the level of the Chief Elections Officer and the observation by CARICOM and other people who have been observing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Granger accused the PPP of \u201cflaking off\u201d votes across the country by using a bloated voters\u2019 list of more than 600,000 instead of embarking on a \u201cgrand larceny\u201d. The APNU+AFC presidential candidate said observers were unaware of how people rigged the elections on polling day. \u201cThat is the sort of thing that happens outside of the purview, outside of the vision of the observer mission. They don\u2019t know what goes on ij some of the backdams and backstreets of this country. That is part of the problems with observer missions. They cannot check up to the degree that inflated voters\u2019 list, which we complained about from the start, which can do harm at the national level,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Demerara Waves)The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) team that scrutinised the recount of the more than 460,000 valid votes cast says the March 2, 2020 general and regional elections reflected the choice of the electorate in who should run the affairs of Guyana for the next five years. \u201cOverall, while we acknowledge that there were some defects<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":11350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-regional-and-international-news"],"yoast_head":"\n