Somebody Rigged Guyana’s Elections – Is Oil now a Reason for Rigged Elections?

The PPP/C has never lost an election since 1953, its first election. In 1964, they were ousted after the governor refused to invite the winning party (the PPP) to form the government. The 1968, 1973, 1980 and 1985 elections were subsequently massively rigged against the PPP. The PPP won the 1992 elections which had irregularities, but not enough to prevent the PPP from winning. The party won again in 1997, 2001, 2006 and 2011.

Did the PPP lose in 2015? The party believes that it has once again been ousted by electoral fraud. From a cursory examination of the facts, we are persuaded that the PPP has a strong case that it has been robbed by electoral manipulations. Now the courts will have to determine whether these elections truly reflected the will of the people or if a government was ousted by fraud.

The PPP has not made a case questioning what happened on the day of election itself. It is not contesting the overall efficacy of the proceedings on the day of elections, even if it has alleged several irregularities. It is not questioning the counting process either, even if the party alleges that a large number of the 1,944 rejected ballots were PPP votes. What it is alleging is that after the counting and the transfer of statements of poll to the DROs and then on to GECOM something happened to change the votes and alter the results of the elections.

The suspicion that something happened that could have altered the votes gained in the elections has been heightened by the admission by GECOM itself, through its Chairman and through the Chief Elections Officer, that there were fake and fraudulent statements of poll. 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 stakeholders. There should have been an inquiry immediately to find out how and by whom these fraudulent SOPs were introduced within the architecture of GECOM. Clearly, why would fraudulent SOPs find their way into the GECOM machinery? The reason cannot be benign. For anyone to replace authentic SOPs with fake SOPs; there must have been evil intentions to rig the election results.

The Chairman, the Commission and the CEO should never have allowed a declaration of the results of the elections without comprehensively discounting that these fake SOPs had no influence on the results. Yet, all of the relevant stakeholders simply dismissed the appearance as if it was a joke. But the appearance of just one fake SOP should be enough to raise questions whether the integrity of the election machinery was compromised. In jurisdictions like the USA, it would have halted all proceedings until all questions were answered and determination made as to the extent of the compromise. But in this case in Guyana, it was dismissed as a strategy of the PPP to delay the results of the elections. A criminal act was simply pushed under the rug.
As if the discovery of fake SOPs was not enough to question the overall integrity of the election process and the integrity of GECOM itself; there was also the discovery of discrepancies in the voting numbers between the SOPs in the possession of the DROs and the PPP. How could this have occurred? The SOPs are prepared by Presiding Officers in multiple copies and signed by the Presiding Officers, the polling agents and observers if they were present. There should not be any discrepancies. But there were discrepancies in many SOPs.

This irregularity became even more confusing when the Chairman proceeded to inform the nation that the SOPs in the possession of the PPP were identical to those at GECOM. Why then the discrepancies with the SOPs in the possession of the DROs? 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 obvious manipulations is to disregard the sanctity of the democratic rights of the citizens. GECOM and the International Observers seemed more concerned about expediency of an early release of results than ensuring the integrity of the elections and securing the democratic rights of citizens.

Worse yet, the discrepancies revealed a frightening pattern of mathematical manipulations to change the entire results. In all cases, the discrepancies revealed an addition to APNU and a reciprocal subtraction from the PPP of 10 or multiples of 10. For an election where the difference between the two main parties is only 4,500 votes, you need only 2,250 votes for a swing of 4,500. For a per box swing of 20, one needs only 220 SOPs, about 10% of the total number of SOPs, to completely alter the elections results. That is exactly what appears to have happened and what the PPP is alleging in the 2015 elections.

The following additional facts raise serious questions about the integrity of GECOM’s electoral machinery. The Election Day staff was never vetted with the PPP. The other political party has not made this an issue in this election. But it did not have to since on that same night a large number of the Polling Day staff donned their APNU shirts soon after they completed the counting. That same evening they also displayed social media pictures of themselves posing with David Granger. This was a vulgar display of partisan politics by a staff that was supposed to execute its duties with impartiality. In addition, many of them had been written up in 2011 as having flagrantly committed offenses in executing their Polling Day duties. GECOM had promised that none of them would be re-employed. Yet these same persons were prominently engaged in the Election Day processes.

With so many irregularities and the significant suspicion why it is that care could not have been taken to reduce the suspicion? It appears that GECOM and the international observers had an agenda. It could be that they simply wanted an early result, but in their vulgar haste to produce an early result they may have gifted Guyana with another government born out of fraud and rigging. 
We do not believe that these suspicious elections results, however, were merely out of expediency to obtain an early result. We believe that there was an unholy alliance to ensure Guyana gifted certain stakeholders with a government, not of, by and for the people, but for international stakeholders. We believe this to be the case because one or more of these international stakeholders is interested in Guyana’s oil deposits.

Dr. Leslie Ramsammy
May 17, 2015

They still haven't gotten the message from the electorate yet.