Dear Editor,
It is imperative that a response be made to the very disingenuous remarks attributed to Mr Vishnu Bandhu, Leader of the United Republican Party (URP) in an article which was published in the Guyana Times of Saturday, December 19, titled ‘URP drops out of LGE.’
In that article, Mr Bandhu is recorded as having made several statements which we will address as follows:-
He accused the Commission of cheating the electoral process in May, stating that there were fake Statements of Polls, but provides no evidence to substantiate this position.
According to the Guyana Times article, Mr Bandhu then took the quantum leap by mouthing that there was “stuffing of ballot boxes.” He provides nothing to substantiate this position, but makes this damning allegation nevertheless. We challenge Mr Bandhu to provide evidence of any case of the “stuffing” of ballot boxes or publicly withdraw this statement.
As the leader of a political party that contested the last general and regional elections, Mr Bandhu ought to know that he could have challenged the results of the elections if he is convinced that “several voters had sworn they had voted for URP.”
Reportedly Mr Bandhu posited that, “Last May, prior to the General Elections, we made a list of requests to Gecom that promised to honour them. But the election body broke its commitment, failing to deliver on most of the simple requests, including to grant accreditation to our polling agents to be present at the polling stations to guarantee a free and fair election.”
Gecom is totally unaware of any such letter from Mr Bandhu. In fact, in the run-up to Nomination Day for the 2015 general and regional elections, Gecom staff literally assisted Mr Bandhu, as we did other political parties, to meet the list requirements thereby ensuring that they qualified to contest the elections. We were most helpful, in a very cordial manner, to Mr Bandhu and others from his party. We therefore find it amazing and disturbing that Mr Bandhu would accuse us of failing to deliver on his requests. We at the Gecom Secretariat have no knowledge of any list of issues to which Mr Bandhu is making reference. We have no record of having received any such list and none of our staff who were integrally involved with the management of the elections has any knowledge of any such list.
Then Mr Bandhu is reported to have said in a press release that “what followed was a very controversial election that cannot be deemed to be free and fair and/or accurate representation of the will of the people”. This, again, is a very damning statement from Mr Bandhu without an iota of evidence provided to substantiate such a charge.
Mr Bandhu claims that his party had requested to view the SoPs, but was denied. The Chief Election Officer never received any such request from Mr Bandhu or any of his representatives.
The Returning Officer of District (Region) No 3 maintains that the URP was kept informed every step of the way about the activities undertaken by him and the need for the URP to be present. However, according to the Returning Officer, on such occasions he was informed that the party did not have the capacity to be represented. However, the URP did have a female representative who witnessed the count at the Office of the Returning Officer but refused to sign the document delineating the results of the elections for District 3.
Mr Bandhu posited in the article that (i) if the Elections Commission could not honour his party’s simple requests in the general elections, “what confidence is there that this local election will be free and fair?” and (ii) nothing has changed since May to bolster confidence in Gecom presiding over a clean election.
We maintain that we received no list of requests from the URP. Further, we guarantee that all of the activities associated with preparations for and the conduct of local government elections are being implemented with the strictest compliance with the legal provisions and the policy decisions of the Commission. Accordingly, all concerned can look forward to elections that will be conducted in a free, fair and transparent manner.
The URP’s statement that it will not contest the local government elections as a party is noted.
Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Persaud
Deputy Chief Election Officer
