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From what I understand Mits, they have all of those legal options but the swearing in of Granger does not have to wait on their resolutions. I may be wrong but I think the only pre-swearing in option available is Claudette Singh directing Lowenfield to direct Mingo to open the boxes as she promised yesterday but I don't see that happening. Then you have the issue of the running clock. The swearing in of a new president has to occur on Monday. I don't know if there are any legal remedies for that delay.

FM

I was giddy all elections season. I followed all the reports of the rallies, I attended the PPP and APNU+AFC rallies in my community; I was sharing opinions online, I got into some healthy debates and discussions, wrote some analyses of all parties, and provided commentary on the history and the current happenings of politics in Guyana. On March 2nd, “E-Day” I was at my polling station (as tradition dictates) at the crack of dawn! It was my second time voting and I was ready to cast my ballot!

As someone said, “Elections is like Christmas for you” and it really was. Until the Mingo/Region 4 fiasco. The final votes to be verified, and we were not getting it right. Spreadsheets and not SOPs were being used by GECOM, people took breaks and went missing for hours, there was ruckus and a stampede by the Opposition parties, and finally a declaration was made by the Returning Officer before the SOPs were done being verified. Observers got arrested, people protested; we went to court.

The court invalidated the declaration, said it needs to be verified thoroughly in a transparent process. The process began the next day, not as the court ordered so they went back to court for clarity. It re-started, not as the court ordered so the international observers left with their decision that this was not transparent as the other Regions were and it did not seem fair.

Let’s flashback for second.

On March 2 at 10pm I was at my polling station, all giddy again because results are coming out! I am running on the corridors of Diamond Secondary School (my polling station), taking pictures of the results, sending it to my neighbours and even posted it on Facebook.

See here in this screenshot. Time stamp: March 2, 10:34pm.
Now to the present. Imagine my surprise when I heard a recording of GECOM calling out the votes of my polling station. The figures they called out did not match the figures of the SOPs I took a picture of. In fact, GECOM’s figures deducted 20 votes from the PPP/C and added it to the APNU+AFC.

I cried.

Literally, I cried. And my body got numb.

Even though I voted for the coalition it was wrong of GECOM to do this. This is not “the will of the people”. This was tampering with people’s votes. This was invalidating their votes. This was abusing their democratic right.

An observer said it has been like that all day. Every SOP GECOM read from, inflated and deflated numbers of the SOPs they got from people like me who took pictures, from news agencies and even the PPP SOPs.

GECOM initially refused to show other persons the SOPs they were reading from. They then did this via projector at the HQ, didn’t answer how they came about those SOPs. They declared a winner for Region 4.

I am not saying the government did this to stay in power BTW. That is an assumption, I have no proof to say this and I am ridiculously naive to believe people will always do the right thing.
I am saying Returning Officer Mingo and his camp did this because he and they are biased towards a coalition victory.
I too want the coalition to win, but not like this. It needs to be a fair race, and a clean win.

We vilify persons, the observers - local and international - the commentators, the unbiased, the independent Guyanese who are not loyal to any party, just their State. We vilify them for seeing what GECOM did, for saying something, for raising our voices against this injustice against the Guyanese people by GECOM.

This was eating away at my conscience and I am not even involved in this process! I decided to share my photos, and the recording in the hope that something can be done to correct this wrong.

GECOM has lost our trust, and I will no longer be voting in an election that GECOM oversees unless this injustice is fixed.671085CF-8F31-4316-82F7-96F55B9F6A44

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FM

@Former Member

Banna, what is wrong with you? You are all over the place. You knew of this "plot" in 2011 but never told anyone. Then you came and promised us that Granger had great things in store for Guyana and we would be pleasantly surprised (those posts are in the archives). Do you get high before you post here?

Do you have some insatiable need to feel important or have others think you are "in the know"????? You've been wrong on every count.

Rest easy Baseman. The Portugese guys, Shuman the Amerindian and segments of black society are already on the case. Even Granger's son in law is on record. Where is yuh fren Rat Man? Writing letters from his Rat Cave? Where is Fat Man? He's kinda hard to miss in public so I assume he's eating indoors.

Like it was in 1992 and other years, others will rise to defend you. You and your anti black Indian posse here keep posting videos, cussing black man and "writing letters".

FM

Opposition political parties submit request for recount of Reg 4 votes

, Source -- https://newsroom.gy/2020/03/14...ount-of-reg-4-votes/

https://i1.wp.com/newsroom.gy/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Parties.jpeg?resize=750%2C430&ssl=1L-R: ANUG Member Kian Jabur, PPP PM Candidate Brigadier (Rt'd) Mark Phillips, ANUG Member Timothy Jonas, Presidential Candidate of TNM Dr Asha Kissoon, Presidential Candidate of PPP Irfaan Ali, Nigel Hinds of Change Guyana, Rawle Aaron of URP and Lenox Shuman of LJP [Photo: Leon Gonsalves/News Room]

Opposition political parties that contested the March 2 general and regional elections, on Saturday officially submitted their request for a recount of votes cast in Region Four following the declaration made by Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo late Friday night.

Elections Agent of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Charles Ramson Jr told the News Room Saturday morning that he was able to successfully deliver the party’s request to a Deputy Returning Officer at the Command Centre of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) on High and Hadfield Streets, Georgetown.

“She signed for it; it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re gonna get our recount but at the very least, what I can say is that we’ve followed the processâ€Ķwe are within the law,” Ramson Jr told reporters.

He said the PPP will hold Chairman of GECOM Justice (rt’d) Claudette Singh to her word that if there are discrepancies in the votes for Region Four, there will be a recount.

Meanwhile, The Citizenship Initiative (TCI) also served its official request for a recount to the DRO of Region Four and to the Clerk of the Returning Officer.

https://newsroom.gy/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Ramson.jpg

Charles Ramson

The vote count for Region Four, as declared by Mingo, is likely to give the Coalition a one-seat majority.

The votes for parties in Region Four showed a win for the APNU+AFC with 130, 289 votes at the regional elections and 136,057 votes in the general elections.

But the opposition parties have deemed the tabulation process as fraudulent and accused Mingo of using fictitious numbers and blurred Statements of Poll that no one could see.

If the recount request is granted, it would mean “that the boxes (actually envelopes containing votes for each party from the poll station) will be opened up and each ballot counted individually again to verify them,” said TCI in a statement.

Other letters requesting a recount were served by Change Guyana, A New and United Guyana (ANUG), and the United Republican Party.

See TCI’s full statement below:

The Citizenship Initiative (TCI) wishes to acknowledge both the technical completion of the counting process for Region 4 as well as the glaring discrepancies in the process that render the final results an unreliable and inaccurate indicator of the will of the people.

Throughout this process, Mr. Clairmont Mingo has engaged in an active dereliction of his duty as Returning Office for Region 4 and has carried out his statutory obligations in contempt of the general judgment and specific declaration of Chief Justice (ag) Roxanne George. For those who are not aware of Mr. Mingo’s actions in the wake of a very direct and clear judgment from the CJ, we summarise:

  1. Mr. Mingo attempted to use a spreadsheet in contravention of the CJ’s orders to use certified SOPs in the ascertaining of votes.
  2. When this was opposed, he then resorted to a clerk reading out from what he purported to be SOPs but which where not visible to any eligible person there, including both observers and candidates. The numbers he called for polling stations which information (via photographs of SOPs) were in our position did not match our information. He denied both candidates and observer requests to view the SOPs directly. He was then served legal notice to appear before the Chief Justice in order for him to comply with her orders.
  3. When he returned, instead of arranging for video-equipment in the Ashmin’s building to view and project the SOPs that his clerk was reading from, he stopped the process for over two hours and announced that he would be moving the operations to a location with better media facilities. It should be noted that the Ashmin’s facility had a fully functioning media centre capable of fulfilling the declaration of the CJ.
  4. The facility eventually settled upon at GECOM was less suited for the process Mr. Mingo was obligated to carry than those at Ashmin’s. The source documents scanned and projected appeared to be photocopies of SOPs, the projected images were blurry, the projector some distance away from where observers and candidates sat, and there were no clear signatures on the documents projected. More importantly, numbers on many of the purported SOPs appeared to be doctored and were again not in concord with the independently sourced SOPs in our possession.

I personally committed to staying throughout the entire process and so what is being offered is a firsthand account of what took place. We are a small party, but we are not alone in our perception of how this process unfolded. Every single international observer mission, bar none has commented upon and condemned GECOM’s conduct over the past week.

We urge Guyanese to consider the future of this country if this fundamental process by which we select our leadership is allowed to remain as flawed as it currently is.

The Citizenship Initiative therefore believes that the process yesterday was so flawed and tainted that the last logical next step to restore any credibility to these elections is that a recount has to be undertaken and in full public scrutiny beginning from the unsealing of the ballot boxes to the final, credible declaration of the results. We have, in keeping with the Representation of the People Act, submitted our request for a recount before the statutory deadline of noon today.

We are asking that Chairperson Justice Claudette Singh ensure that a recount, as she has committed to, take place as the process yesterday was so egregiously flawed that the result cannot be taken to be in itself an accurate representation of the will of the people.

Rondha-Ann Lam

Presidential Candidate

The Citizenship Initiative

FM

Heard APNU lead by Granger and Nagamootoo will be heading to Linden for a thank you rally - there is a motorcade leaving square of the revolution at 2:30. 

Note : Ramjat not in the picture??

I will wait to see ABC countries  live up to their word of isolation before making any further decision. will they attend Granger swearing ceremony - we will see .

FM
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