Gaskin says AFC leaders made serious mistake by not calling out Mingo fraud
-faults Claudette Singh for indecisiveness
As he plans a career outside of politics, former Minister of Business Dominic Gaskin says Alliance for Change (AFC) leaders made a serious misjudgment in not calling out the District Four fraud perpetrated by Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo and he also faulted Guyana Elections Commission Chair Claudette Singh for not acting more decisively in the five-month-long elections crisis.
Declaring his disgust with politics, Gaskin said that he is disappointed that the AFC, of which he is an executive, did not condemn the activities of Mingo, who tried on March 5th to fraudulently give the elections to the former governing coalition, APNU+AFC, knowing that it had not seen, much less analysed, any of the Statements of Polls (SOPs) that suggested the win.
“After what we saw in March, which was a very glaring attempt by Mr. Mingo and whoever he was working with to make a declaration on his own figures, not supported by the SOPs that GECOM had in its possession, I thought the AFC made a wrong call on that particular issue and I am not sure how you recover from something like that,” Gaskin told Sunday Stabroek in an interview.
“I think the leadership exercised bad judgement at that point and never thought of looking back and just went further and further down that slippery slope of being a political party and ignoring something that everyone saw and were screaming about. We chose to brush it aside as if it never happened and in doing so we lost the trust of that very niche of that support base that the AFC brought independently to the coalition“, he added.