Records show APNU+AFC electoral fraud claims at Yarrowkabra polling station are wrong

Last Updated on Friday, 8 May 2020, 12:27 by Denis Chabrol

The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) has disputed claims of electoral fraud at a polling station at Yarrowkabra, Linden-Soesdyke Highway, showing that the Statement of Recount is matching the Statement of Poll.

PPP Executive Member, Attorney-at-Law Anil Nandlall scotched rumours by the incumbent coalition that the recount had, now in Day 3, had uncovered a major discrepancy with the votes that were recorded on polling day, March 2, 2020.

“I put the Statement of Poll and the Statement of Recount, signed by the PNC and the APNU and their representatives, all the parties and you will see that the number of votes in the Statement of Poll that the APNU received and the number of votes in the Statement of Recount that the APNU received  are the same numbers. Why are you going to peddle such lies that are easily debunkable?,” he said.

Nandlall said APNU+AFC positions like those are aimed at undermining the credibility of the electoral process that President David Granger has said was “free, fair and orderly” in his latest address to the nation following GECOM’s issuance of the now gazetted Recount Order.

An Bartica-Apnu+Afc Re-Election Facebook page accuses the PPP of tampering with a spreadsheet and Statement of Poll for the ballot box at at Yarrowkabra Primary School t0 make it show 41 votes for the APNU+AFC and 59 votes for the PPP. That coalition Social Media page says that when the recount was conducted on Thursday and the actual ballots in the ballot box were recounted it showed “a stunning 160 votes for the APNU+AFC and 63 for the PPP.”

“This means that the PPP rigging machine was seeking to deny the APNU+AFC of a massive 119 votes in a single ballot box,” the coalition’s subordinate Facebook Page states.

The Bartica-APNU+AFC Re-election Facebook page hours later accused the PPP of deleting its originally uploaded records and replacing them with the correct ones to save face. “It is now clear that the PPP operatives removed the document from the website, corrected it with the recount figures and then re-uploaded it back online. While they were correcting the document however, the website had to be taken down and it was during this time that the international IT experts went into action and tracked the PPP’s digital footprints and uncovered the back-end records for the website,” the coalition said. The IT experts were not named.

PPP General Secretary, Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday called on APNU+AFC to take its concerns of substitute voting in the names of deceased and emigrated persons to the court through an elections petition.

GECOM is to decide whether to extend the recount deadline from 25 days based on the rate of recount which has so far seen more than 60 of the 2,339 boxes of ballots counted.