Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton said yesterday that A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) had filed court action to block the local government elections slated for June 12, after the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) failed to address the charges of fraud APNU made about the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) nomination lists.
At the party’s weekly press conference yesterday, Norton explained that lawyers had approached the court on Wednesday with the party’s application. “We filed … a court action seeking to either postpone or stop the local government elections… As far as I gather from the lawyers, we have a 28 May date fixed for hearing on this matter. We also have other pending legal action that we will take to deal with this issue. But as it stands, on the question of the manipulation of the boundaries and a number of other issues we have already filed. And we will continue to file legal action to deal with these issues.”
According to Norton, this route was taken because GECOM was unwilling to address the concerns raised by the APNU relating to cases of fraud uncovered with several nominations for the upcoming elections.
He stressed that APNU had reported the issue to the Guyana Police Force as well. “We are continuing to protest their actions and we will take legal action on all aspects of these irregularities. We believe the voters’ list is flawed, bloated and we will continue to fight for that.”
A statement from the party yesterday said that for GECOM to state that the allegations of forgery and voter impersonation were matters for the police and for election petitions, was “a gross dereliction of its constitutional responsibilities to the people of Guyana.”
It stressed that the commission has a duty, an obligation, and a binding undertaking to deliver fair and impartial elections, adding, “it is not the duty or obligation of neither the Guyana Police Force (GPF) nor the High Court. The Constitution explicitly places that responsibility fully in the lap of GECOM. The commission has no room for dodging and ducking its obligation here. Clearly, GECOM is a pawn of the PPP administration and cannot deliver free, fair, and credible elections to the people of Guyana.”
Furthermore, the party said that for GECOM to apply one set of rules to certain constituencies and different rules to others further exposes it to charges of “ineptitude or political bias at its very top.”
Prior to revealing that the court action was filed, during an interview with the Stabroek News, Norton had said, “I have different advice that you could challenge by way of magistrate. I know what the petitions entail but challenges will mount from all levels and there will be challenges.”
Over the past few weeks, both the governing PPP/C and the main opposition APNU have contended that a number of names have been forged.
Since then, using the medium of Facebook, with attachments of what appear to be GECOM documents, the two parties highlighted several names that were purportedly forged. Some of the people have claimed they had not given their consent to having their names on the list as a representative.
“Well, we have provided the evidence. We have gone to the police, et cetera. We have accumulated the evidence and we will present the evidence, and much of the evidence is on Facebook, you can see it. Our commissioner presented the case [to] GECOM and we will present a case again but we have already given to our commissioners the evidence of it and we will present it as a party,” Norton explained.
“We will continue to protest and contest at the same time because we have some objectives and we want it; we will have to continue to fight for that. At the same time we don’t want to leave the constituencies open for the PPP/C to dominate.”
