Dear Editor,
David Granger’s “Ministry of the Presidency” has demanded of me and the media that has published my letter of May 22nd, an apology for what they claim are “several untruths and numerous inaccuracies”
I wrongly believed, from a picture showing Claudette Singh sitting at Granger’s side that was carried in the same report of his Press Conference, that Ms. Singh had attended his Press Conference. I apologize unreservedly for that mistake to David Granger and Ms. Singh.
I have absolutely no apology to make for anything else I have said in my letter, all of which is evidentially accurate.
If David Granger believes, as his Ministry claims, that I have published falsehoods “designed to besmirch” his “good name”, then like any other citizen, he can sue me for libel. I am sure that there are many, many lawyers in Guyana who would be pleased to rush to defend me in Court and be delighted at the opportunity to cross-examine David Granger.
So what did I say that they want me to apologize for? I said that he arrived at the Convention Centre “with a massive security”. The fact is that Granger has surrounded himself, as a “President” ruling a tiny country with an amount of security larger than any of our previous Presidents and, certainly, of the kind employed by military dictators such as Idi Amin of Uganda infamy, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Fidel Castro of Cuba, General Gowon of Nigeria, all of whom I can speak of from my personal experience, having met with them all at one time or another in my past.
The Ministry says that I “must know that President Granger remains President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana until another President is sworn in”. Yes, I also know that David Granger has held on to the Presidency long after, more than a year since another President should have been sworn in. He has spent millions of taxpayers’ dollars paying lawyers to keep him in office by refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the No Confidence Motion against his Government and, even after the CCJ ruling against him, further delaying the holding of an election.
David Granger, we also know, hangs on to a caretaker, de facto Presidency 83 days, as I write this letter, after the election was held on March 2nd, 2020 because GECOM, rather than rejecting Mingo’s fraudulent attempt at rigging the elections result, has taken us into a Recount.
In my view and many others, David Granger used his dubious Presidential authority to force himself upon the Chairman of GECOM and her staff and the Caricom Scrutineers in meeting which should never have been held.
I did not, in my letter, say that David Granger, as the Ministry claimed refused “to answer questions” at his Press Conference. What I said in my letter is that when Granger was asked “whether he would recognize and accept the results of the Recount”, “he refused to recognize that the recount of the ballots must deliver the results of the elections” .
Granger was asked the question twice and preferred instead to answer it by saying that “whatever declaration is made by the Chairman of the Elections Commission would be recognized as legitimate by the Coalition”. What I have written is on the record and was seen and heard by all. Ms. Singh, of course, does not necessarily have to recognize the Recount, hence Granger’s answer.
At the Press Conference, Granger also refused, when asked, to recognize that the Lowenfield declaration is fraudulent and should be rejected. That too is on the record. Granger too refuses to admit to the evidence in the Statements of Poll in his possession that he has lost the Elections. I challenge him to publish those Statements.
I have the utmost respect for the Office of the President. I have little or no respect for a man who holds on to it, knowing that he has lost and endangers the entire nation by doing so. If David Granger’s character and good name is in question he has only himself to blame.
As I concluded in my letter, and stand firmly behind, “Granger hangs onto power from a fraud committed and embraced in GECOM by the very people he has appointed to the Commission” and which is embraced by the leading spokespersons of his own party. I repeat, Granger can no longer claim to be innocent.
He must do the decent thing. He owes it to the people of this country. He must concede that he has lost. Let his country free.
Yours faithfully,
Kit Nascimento
