LETTER: Adequate systems were in place to prevent electoral skullduggery at polling stations

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Dear Editor:

Undeniably, the Constitution protects the right of all qualified citizens to vote in national elections. That right is guaranteed once they are in the jurisdiction, alive, and on the list (save and except for Guyanese diplomats working overseas who are allowed to vote while being out of the country).

While Mr. Joseph Harmon and his PNC Team have made unsubstantiated and unproven allegations of administrative discrepancies, what they have not provided to the public as yet, is any indelible evidence of where the constitutional rights of real qualified voters were violated.  What they have done so far is provide manufactured fairytale stories of “jumbie” voters by pretending not to understand the administrative procedures in the respective polling stations.

Clearly Mr. Harmon and his crew are hoping to wish away the “folio” book, which is a key instrument of internal controls in a polling station.  What the “folio” book does is empower the Presiding Officer (PO) to identify any attempt by a fraudster to impersonate another.

So for Mr. Harmon to now come and claim that there were some 86,000 administrative discrepancies leads one to ask the question – where is Mr. Harmon’s sense?

What Mr. Harmon is not telling this nation from all appearances is that since the appointment of Mr. James Patterson as the GECOM Chair, APNU was the beneficiary of preferential treatment on all decisions in that organisation.  What Mr. Harmon is also not telling the nation is that the attempt at rigging the results in the Tabulation Room by Team Mingo was just a yard too far over the cliff. The evidence will show that the only malpractice of a material nature that took place in these 2020 elections took place in the Ashmin’s Building and in the yard of the GECOM Headquarters on a bed-sheet under the stewardship of Mr. Mingo.

So in the final analysis, the only thing that is not credible in these 2020 General Elections is Mr. Mingo’s “jumbie” arithmetic and the wild and baseless allegations from the PNC that the migrated and dead voted.  And why is this PNC narrative not credible?  Because it is impossible for the dead and the migrated to vote in the Guyanese elections unless they walked into a polling station and passed the litmus test of matching a photograph on the folio in the hands of every party agent and the PO.  There was more than an adequate quantum of checks and balances to prevent any electoral skullduggery at the polling stations to materially steer the results in a direction that does not represent the will of the people. What happened on elections day was a case where Guyana allowed its people their right to vote freely for the party of their choice.

What is happening today is that this entire nation, especially its youths, are burdened by the task of cleaning up this PNC manufactured mess, with their participation in the recounting exercise at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre.  What we have found in Regions 1, 2, and 5 so far is that those three (3) Returning Officers along with their respective POs, did their job by the book.  What we also found from the boxes used on the East Bank of Demerara, is clear evidence of fraud by Mr. Mingo as he attempted to alter the vote count by some 7,000 voters in favour of the APNU.

So why is Mr. Harmon not talking about these real cases of tabulation fraud as practiced by Mr. Mingo?

Why is he stuck in Le Repentir cemetery with his vivid imagination of “jumbie” voters? All of Guyana knows the answer to these questions; even Mr. Harmon.

Sasenarine Singh

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