APNU continues to sow confusion - President Ramotar
Georgetown GINA, March 23, 2012
President Donald Ramotar has categorically stated that the continued attempts by the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) to sow confusion are meant to affect the country and urged that leaders must look to, and build for the future.
He posited that the coalition seeks to justify its behaviour after the November 28, 2011 elections, “rather than admitting that it is deliberately misleading its supporters and the nation and should offer an apology,” he told media operatives at a press conference at his office today.
“What they are trying to do now is to affect the progress that this country is making. The fact that we are going to build a hydro-electric power station, work towards building the road from the Coast to Lethem, a new deep water harbour, proper hotel of international standard that will make Guyana a destination for important conferences - these seem the target of these attacks that we are seeing in the press,’ he said.
In highlighting the unprincipled behavior of the party, President Ramotar explained that after the 2006 General Elections, “independent observers said that the data base that we had at GECOM was the best this country had and it should be built upon. The PNC then started to insist and make threats,” he said. That party insisted on a new house to house registration process.
“We had an agreement that we will go ahead with a new registration process, abandoning the data base that was recognised as the best data base in Guyana, under the agreement that there will be no questions in the elections. But you see what has happened and how unprincipled they are.”
He suggested that APNU leaders should tell the nation why,” if it (the party) is so concerned about the elections results, why did they along with the AFC, reject the proposal, I made to them when they first raised this matter to me immediately after the elections, that we should have a forensic audit of the elections. Let us go back into the box as we did after the 1997 elections so we could see what was the real results if they had any doubts in their mind,” declared the President, stating that it was unfortunate that after the attempts to block a re-verification of the election results, APNU continues to paint itself as a victim in the process.
The President declared that what APNU has also done, is to bring into question, “the integrity and competence of its very own supporters and polling agents, who were also either scrutineers and or counting agents. They were also several instances where former known PNC/R scrutineers and other officials were directly employed on Elections Day by GECOM in various roles,” he added. He pointed to the fact that there is documented evidence about PPP/C polling agents and scrutineers being refused entry into polling stations.
He reiterated his earlier statements that there were several instances of malpractice between strategically placed GECOM officials who infiltrated the system and APNU. President Ramotar remains confident that the PPP/C did have a decisive victory of more than 50% of the votes at the last national elections.
Referring to a recent APNU press statement, President Ramotar stated that they, the PNC party which is the largest of the coalition, are trying to rewrite history and hide from their past, “A party that made Guyana move from being the most developed country in the region in 1964, to the most backward country by 1992.”
He stated, “They talk about corruption but they haven’t yet explained to us the deal with GT&T when they were privatising the GT&T. These people who have the worst history of corruption…making accusations against this government.”