No evidence to prove APNU’s claim that Joint Services votes were rejected- ANUG Chairman

Last Updated on Saturday, 30 May 2020, 19:29 by Denis Chabrol

A New and United Guyana (ANUG) on Saturday said there is no statistical evidence to prove claims that many of the 8,000 votes cast by soldiers, police and prison service personnel have not been counted.

General Secretary of A Partnership for National Unity, Retired Lt. Col. Joseph Harmon and President of the Guyana Veterans, Retired Lt. Col. George Gomes have expressed concern that the Joint Services votes have not been counted.

Although former Chief-of-Staff of the Guyana Defence Force, Retired Brigadier Mark Phillips has already dismissed Harmon’s previous claim that the Joint Services votes were largely not counted, he today persisted with his suggestion that  servicemen and women might have been disenfranchised but he stayed clear of mentioning any figure. “The issue of the counting of the Disciplined Service ballot has not, to our knowledge, settled by GECOM and the outrage of ranks of the Disciplined Services is palpable, the outrage is palpable,” he said.

The President of the Guyana Veterans  accuses the PPP of not stamping the more than 8,000 Joint Services ballots in the PPP strongholds in Districts 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6. Gomes says this is not accidental or coincidental, but was a deliberate large-scale rigging attempt by the PPP.

ANUG Chairman, Timothy Jonas says only about 2,600 of the 280,000 ballots recounted up to Friday evening were rejected for many other reasons. “Now, from my time counting in there, there are many more instances where you are seeing two Xs, some people got Xs along all the parties’ names or no Xs at all or you cannot identify from the location of the X who the person intended to vote for. There are many more ballots rejected for that reason, many more than because there was no stamp so of the 2,600 rejected ballots, only a small fraction is rejected because there is no stamp,” Jonas said.

Rejecting the President of the Guyana Veterans’ claim that about 8,000 votes of soldiers, police and prison service personnel have not been counted,  Jonas appealed to the Joint Services to ignore such a claim. “We are giving incendiary false information to the Joint Services and if I was a member of the Joint Services and I saw that, I would be riled up. I would be angry so I want to say to the Joint Service that this is not true; look at the facts, look at what has come out so far,” he said.

The People’s Progressive Party’s Prime Ministerial  candidate, Retired Brigadier Mark Phillips has already debunked APNU’s claim that the many of the Joint Services ballots were not counted.