This week Guyanese may once again be remembering those shocking words if unspoken, for this time Mr Ramotar’s successor, the incumbent President David Granger has retreated as usual behind another deafening and disturbing wall of silence so far unable to admit the clear and present evidence of his party’s defeat, and failing one again to reassure a nervous populace who has been put through 100 days of electoral impasse hell.
As the APNU/AFC stubbornly sticks to its refusal to release their original Statements of Polls (SOPs), and Guyana anxiously waits for the next steps towards GECOM formally announcing the winner, the party continues to furiously peddle nasty allegations of widespread fraud, even though it has apparently forgotten signing off on the original documents for all the Regions without any major issues, in an heavily-scrutinised elections endorsed as credible and free and fair by major observers.
Mr Ramotar wanted a recount of every single vote arguing that the Chief Election Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield had identified problems with nearly 500 polling results.
Despite GECOM’s admission that a total recount would make little difference to the final outcome, the President like his successor chose to ignore the authoritative conclusions of international observer teams ranging from the Carter Center, the Commonwealth, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and the Organisation of American States (OAS), to the envoys of the United States of America (USA), Canada and Great Britain, that the elections were free, fair and credible.
As the Election Agent for the PPP/C, Mr Persaud later filed a legal petition demanding a complete recount and fresh polls, alleging that the entire electoral process was flawed citing procedural errors and fake SOPs, but up to now, incredibly, the matter is still pending before the High Court even as Guyana grapples with the prolonged political crisis in the midst of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.
