Unanswered questions

Shrouded in controversy, the 2015 elections results were announced last Saturday placing the APNU+AFC coalition in the seat of government. The new government is beginning to take shape with the appointment of ministers and other top government officials.

The general situation in Georgetown and its environs seems to be getting back to some sense of normalcy. Georgetown literally ground to a halt during the week of elections. School children, especially those sitting the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate Exams, were affected.

Businesses also took a beating as there was a feeling that there would have been a breakout of violence in the commercial areas of the City and other areas. Except the unrest in Sophia, there was general peace and quietude around the country.

Guyanese want to move on with their lives without being fearful that they would be attacked. However, while the country may be gradually returning to normalcy, this does not mean that the many critical issues which were brought to the fore by the political parties, and which no doubt had an impact on the outcome of the elections should be ignored.

The task of running the State must go on but there are numerous questions which GECOM still has to answer to the satisfaction of all stakeholders, especially the ordinary citizens who had a passion to vote for a government of their choice.

It is now public knowledge that the leaders and supporters of the PPP/C feel that they were cheated out of office. Whether this is true or not, GECOM has an obligation to ensure that all such concerns are addressed fully. One cannot dismiss these allegations easily as such approach would have a negative impact in relation to the level of confidence persons place in the elections machinery and governance systems as a whole.

From the evidence gathered so far, it looks as if the PPP/C has a strong case for an elections petition to challenge the results. The party has every right to take the matter to the courts to determine whether these elections truly reflected the will of the people.

An election is about the will of the people. It’s an exercise of their freedom to choose their government and representatives. To dismiss the importance and significance of these alleged cases of fraud is to disregard the sanctity of the democratic rights of the citizens.

The PPP/C is alleging that after the counting and the transfer of Statements of Poll to the DROs, and then on to GECOM, something happened that might have altered the results in favour of the coalition. One must note also that it was the Chief Elections Officer who told the nation during a live press conference that fake Statements of Poll were detected.

There were a number of questions being raised about the entire elections process. GECOM has merely provided vague statements in response to the concerns of PPP/C and other key stakeholders. No one really told the nation how many of these fake SOPs were found, for which box and which division and whether the votes for political parties corresponded with the authentic SOPs.

The discovery of even one fake Statement of Poll should have triggered a forensic audit immediately that involved all parties, including the Observers. There should have been an inquiry immediately to find out how and by whom these fraudulent SOPs were introduced within the architecture of GECOM.

Given the issues raised in relation to the elections results, many persons are still of the view that GECOM should not have allowed a declaration of the results to go ahead without comprehensively discounting that these fake SOPs had no influence on the outcome.

In addition to the PPP/C moving to the courts to determine if the elections were a reflection of the will of the people, the party must also register its strong objection to the performance of the international community and the Observers Groups tasked with overseeing the process.

From what we gather they were more concerned about GECOM releasing the results early as against ensuring the integrity of the elections and securing the democratic rights of citizens. That said, we believe that GECOM is faced with a huge challenge of regaining public confidence in the work it does.