APNU+AFC claim of uncounted disciplined services’ votes doesn’t stand up to scrutiny

Members of the Guyana Police Force line up to cast their ballots on February 21. A total of 8,369 of the 10,226 ranks from the Guyana Defence Force (GDF), the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Prison Service who were eligible to vote cast a ballot on that day.
Members of the Guyana Police Force line up to cast their ballots on February 21. A total of 8,369 of the 10,226 ranks from the Guyana Defence Force (GDF), the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Prison Service who were eligible to vote cast a ballot on that day.

Despite evidence to the contrary, the incumbent APNU+AFC is maintaining its claim that votes cast by members of the Disciplined Services were rejected after polling day staff failed to correctly stamp their ballots.

In a televised statement, APNU+AFC Campaign Chairman Joseph Harmon yesterday ominously declared “the outrage of ranks of the disciplined services is palpable” as he said the matter of the counting of their ballots remain unsettled.

Harmon’s claim followed the publication of a letter from the President of the Guyana Veterans Legion Lieutenant Colonel (ret’d) George Gomes.

In the letter, published in yesterday’s Stabroek News, Gomes claimed that over 8,000 Disciplined Services votes were not stamped in PPP strongholds in Districts 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 as part of a deliberate large-scale rigging attempt by the PPP.

“Their voice is crying out loud against the effort by the PPP to have GECOM [Guyana Elections Commission] not count their votes in the current recount, because they are unstamped.  PPP agents did not stamp the Disciplined Services ballots, as they were required to, after these ballots were taken to specific polling stations in the Regions on Elections Day,” Gomes contended. This would mean that almost all Disciplined Services votes were not counted as 8,369 votes were cast when they went to the polls in the week preceding the general and regional elections.

However, the claim is not supported by any of the available evidence and executive member of A New and United Guyana (ANUG) Timothy Jonas yesterday labelled it an outright lie designed to rile people up.

“When the Lieutenant Colonel Gomes said 8,000 people have been disenfranchised, he’s telling a lie because so far the total number of rejected ballots is about 2000. …look at the facts. Look at what has come out so far. If there are only 2,600 ballots rejected so far, how on earth somebody could talk about 8,000 disenfranchised voters? It’s beyond credibility. It’s not even a point that makes any sense, it is an outright lie and it is designed to rile people up and I reject it and I condemn it,” Jonas told reporters outside of the Arthur Chung Conference Centre yesterday.

He added that to pretend that 8,000 votes have been rejected because there is no stamp when ballots from the Joint Service are intermingled in batches of 40 is to say that 200 polling stations had corrupt staff, agents and observers.

“[This includes agents] from APNU, PPP/C, GECOM and all the observers who saw these ballots come and saw these ballots thrown into the box. It would have had to have happened 200 times,” he stressed.

Prime Ministerial Candidate for the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) yesterday also stated that Harmon’s statement is riddled with lies which only serve to rile up the Guyanese public. Phillips stressed that all Guyanese, whether they support the PPP/C, APNU+AFC or any other party, should reject these fallacious claims.

According to GECOM’s Polling Day manual, “prior to Election Day, the Chief Election Officer will cause to be delivered to the Returning Officer of each District concerned, sealed PE 20 envelopes containing ballots cast by members of the Disciplined Forces accompanied by sealed PE 12 envelopes containing the Ballot Paper Account.”

At some convenient time before the close of the poll, the Presiding Officer (PO) is expected to open the envelopes received with the marked ballot papers and Tendered Ballot Papers.  Once open, the PO will without unfolding count these ballot papers, check the accompanying Ballot Paper Account [Form 23] to verify that the total is correct and inform Polling Agents of the proposed action to intermix the Disciplined Forces Ordinary Ballots with the Ordinary Ballots of the Polling Station. At this point, the PO stamps each of ballot paper at the top for General Elections and at the bottom for Regional Elections in its folded state and inserts the folded ballot paper in the ballot box.

The Disciplined Service ballot therefore becomes indistinguishable from every other ballot cast in those polling stations and the secrecy of the ballot is maintained in keeping with Guyana’s laws.

Following the voting by the Disciplined Services, GECOM on February 28th published the list of 200 stations where ballots cast by service members would be intermixed. Using the Statements of Recounts published by The Citizenship Initiative, Sunday Stabroek conducted a cursory examination of the number of rejected ballots at these stations and found the number to be minimal.

The two “intermixing” stations in District One, which were both located at the Mabaruma Primary, recorded a total of six rejected ballots. None of these ballots were rejected because of a “want of official mark”, the legal term used for an unstamped ballot.

In District Two, the seven intermixing stations had 12 rejected ballots. Of that number, three were rejected for “want of official mark”.

In District Three an examination of 14 of the 36 stations found a mere 12 rejected votes, of which none were for want of official mark. In District Five, a similar examination of 19 of the 36 stations found 30 rejected votes, none of which were for want of official mark. Finally in District Six, which is still being counted, there were up to yesterday 36 rejected votes at the 16 intermixing stations examined and none were for want of official mark.

In fact, the March 4 declarations (these do not include District 4) show that a total of 2,481 ballots were rejected, which is significantly less than 8,000.

Of that number, just over 100 were rejected for “want of official mark;” a much larger number were rejected as “unmarked or void for uncertainty.”