2020 General & Regional Elections: Govt to launch probe into how confidential data on citizens ended up in hands of APNU/AFC
The fact that immigration and registration data of citizens ended up in the hands of the then-ruling A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) party in the aftermath of the 2020 General and Regional Elections, will now be the subject of investigations.
This is according to Legal Affairs Minister and Attorney General Anil Nandlall, during the latest edition of his programme “Issues in the News”, where he alluded to the fact that data that should have been in the custody of the authorities, was used by APNU/AFC to make false and politically charged claims against citizens.
“Perhaps we should have done it before, but it is not too late. These concocted and fabricated allegations continue to be made by that rigging cabal who tried relentlessly to pervert those elections. They manufactured records from the Immigration Department and the GRO office,” the Attorney General said.
Attorney General Anil Nandlall, SC
Nandlall pointed out that back in 2020 when APNU/AFC first made its erroneous claims, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) did investigations of its own. During its investigations, the PPP/C was able to find many of the persons that APNU/AFC claimed were out of the jurisdiction or dead.
In fact, many of these persons came forward to protest against and dispute APNU/AFC’s claims, which it had submitted to the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM). This publication published several such persons, who had been accused by the then ruling party of being either dead or out of the jurisdiction when their vote was recorded.
“Well, the Police or the relevant agency will have to investigate and tell the public where that documents came from and who was responsible for compiling them and upon whose directions they were compiled. That will happen very shortly, in a matter of days,” Nandlall said.
Another frequent point of contention by the APNU/AFC is how 49 boxes in Better Hope/LBI were missing statutory documents following the elections. According to Nandlall, however, it is on GECOM to investigate this issue.
“Now, as I have established the matter is now within GECOM. Call [GECOM] if [there are any] doubts… is to call Mingo and call Lowenfield…and ask them to come out publicly and contradict me…raise it as a matter for the commission to interrogate because it’s a GECOM issue,” the Legal Affairs Minister said sternly.
Nandlall also pointed out that it was the APNU/AFC while in power, that was the custodian of the electoral process and would therefore be better able to answer to the whereabouts of the missing statutory documents, than his party.
Polling documents carelessly stuffed into bags at the office of the Region Four Returning Officer, back in 202
“But every one of the irregularities that they are concocting and manufacturing, they want to throw at the PPP’s doorstep and the Government’s front door. But those are GECOM issues,” Nandlall said.
In fact, during the height of the confusion post-2020 elections, elections officials attached to the office of the then Returning Officer for Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), Clairmont Mingo, were captured on video carelessly handling polling documents. Mingo has since been fired from GECOM. He is also facing electoral fraud charges before the court.
The video was leaked at a time when APNU/AFC was claiming “electoral fraud” because the documents for several polling places on the East Coast of Demerara (ECD), Region Four, could not be found.
The areas from where the ancillary documents are missing include several of the People’s Progressive Party’s (PPP) strongholds. Among the missing documents are poll books, counterfoils, and the marked (ticked off) Official List of Electors.
Those documents were supposed to have been stored in the ballot boxes, however, they were placed into bags instead. GECOM had said at the time that it checked the poll bags in hope of recovering those missing documents but they were not found.
As such, it summoned the Deputy Returning Officers (DROs), who worked between Ogle to Lusignan to explain what transpired on Elections Day but those officers did not turn up to the meeting. GECOM did not publish to names of the DROs who deliberately missed the meeting.
Subsequently, however, at least one Presiding Officer took to social media to claim that instructions were handed down by those in the upper echelons of GECOM, to not put the relevant documents in the ballot box.