President Donald Ramotar has accused APNU and AFC of “manipulating” the results of last year’s general elections and cheating the PPP/C of a majority victory—new claims for which opposition leader David Granger said he would be demanding an explanation.
“For sure, I think we had over 50%. I think we lost some votes, no doubt, but I don’t think we lost enough to bring us under 50%, but the results were through manipulation,” Ramotar was quoted as saying in an interview published in the Guyana Chronicle’s Sunday edition, when asked whether the PPP/C was robbed. “My own realistic assessment was that we had probably between 52 [and] 53%,” he said, while also indicating that his party withdrew requests for partial recounts to avert any outbreak of violence.
“This is really so ludicrous and fantastic that it is difficult to respond,” opposition leader and APNU Chairman David Granger told Stabroek News last evening, in response to Ramotar’s reported statements. “The whole idea is ridiculous—that the opposition, which does not control the process, does not determine where the polling stations are, should be capable of manipulating the results!”
Attempts to elicit a comment from the AFC’s Khemraj Ramjattan yesterday were futile.
Based on the official results from the Guyana Elections Commission (Gecom), the Ramotar-led PPP/C gained 48.6% of the valid votes counted and 32 seats in the 65-seat National Assembly; APNU gained 40.8% of the votes and 26 seats; and AFC 10.3% of the votes and seven seats. As a result, while the incumbent managed to secure presidency, the opposition has a one-seat majority in the National Assembly.
However, according to the Guyana Chronicle interview, Ramotar said the PPP/C leadership was aware that the party had amassed a minimum 53% of the votes at the polls, based on the reports from its polling agents.
Ramotar suggested that the opposition parties manipulated the elections results by scaring away polling agents in South Georgetown and other areas and by penetrating Gecom. “…They did a lot of wicked things in South Georgetown and some other areas, where they created an atmosphere not to have any PPP/C polling agents around, and they managed to get them out by terrible hostility and threatening violence and so on. I think, also, that you’re right again and that they penetrated Gecom and controlled (to some extent) the elections machinery, where they were not even taking instructions from the Chairman or the Chief Elections Officer and they were doing a lot of manipulation at that point in time. Even with the counting, I understand that they kept people far away so that they could not see what was happening. That was confirmed to me by independent observers; so you are right, I think that there was some level of manipulation on the part of the opposition,” he was quoted as saying.
Prior to the declaration of the elections results, the PPP/C did request recounts of votes in three regions but subsequently withdrew the request.
According to Ramotar, the decision to withdraw the recount requests was in order to ensure there was no violence. “We wanted to ensure that there was no break out of violence, because we think that would have held back our country if we went down that road. As far as the development of Guyana was concerned it would have had a very negative effect and so we chose at that point in time to call off the recount; but that was not the only reason,” he said.
A Gecom official, who questioned the timing of Ramotar making known the PPP/C’s position, noted that anyone with concerns about the results could have mounted a challenge through an elections petition. Under the National Assembly Validity of Elections Act, a petition would have had to have been filed within 28 days of the January 10, 2012 gazetting of the elections results.
‘Serious charges’
Meanwhile, Granger, who emphasised that APNU remains committed to resolving the country’s problems in the continuing tripartite engagement with the PPP/C and AFC, said that the coalition would be seeking an explanation from Ramotar, while adding that his comments were “un-statesmanlike” and “damaging” to the way people would perceive the head-of-state.
According to Granger, Ramotar, by turning the facts on the head, seemed to be trying to give the public an excuse for the “miscarriage that was about to be perpetrated” when the Returning Officer for Region Four almost made a false declaration that would have given the PPP/C a majority. He referred to the attempt to declare results for Region Four without some 10,000 votes from South Georgetown. “We are prepared to examine the polls and we are doing so by examining the statements of polls,” he said, referring to APNU’s efforts to reconcile the original statements of poll in Gecom’s possession with those in possession of the coalition’s polling agents.
Granger, who noted that there were several problems with the elections, said “several examples of misdemeanours” perpetrated by the PPP/C administration, including attempted invasions of polling stations near the close of polls by known members of the ruling party, including Kwame McCoy and Odinga Lumumba, to disrupt the elections process.
He also pointed to polling stations that were relocated to private residences in some areas at the last minute, while contending that the PPP/C won between 80% and 90% of the votes cast at these locations.
He also took offence at Ramotar’s suggestion in the Chronicle interview that the PPP/C lost a seat in Linden due to racial campaigning by the opposition. Of the 15,816 people that voted in Linden, APNU received 11,353 of the valid votes cast to capture the region’s two geographic constituency seats, while the PPP/C received 2,868 votes. Ramotar said, “We had a seat in Linden the last term, so I am disappointed that we lost that seat this time around. I think we lost some support there largely because the opposition carried a very strong racial line in their campaign. We received 17% of the votes, which is still very good, but I cannot deny that the racial line on which they campaigned did have an impact. It is their normal strategy; and this time it was worse because they pushed the racial line in a very hard way.”
In response, Granger said Ramotar should apologise to APNU and to the people of Linden for his statements. “Mr Ramotar needs to move from being PPP General Secretary and start being president of all of Guyana,” Granger said, emphasising that the accusation of racism “can’t be taken lightly.” The people of Linden, he added, voted against the PPP/C because of the “real anger” over the administration’s treatment of the region.
“The vote was not a racist vote, but a reaction to PPP taking Linden for granted,” Granger said, while citing the anger in the region over the state’s continued monopoly of the airwaves there as well as the bad roads and other deteriorating infrastructure.
“When you talk about racism, people came over to APNU when they heard the evidence from Jagdeo-Kissoon libel case and the evidence of Dr [Roger] Luncheon and what was really going on,” he said.
“We are not going to ignore this,” he said, “because those are serious charges.”
