President Ali brushes aside use of cash grant recipients’ personal data for electioneering

Last Updated on Thursday, 20 November 2025, 21:28 by Writer

President Irfaan Ali on Wednesday shrugged off a section of the European Union Election Observation Mission’s (EUEOM) report that his People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) used cash grant registrants’ personal data for campaigning in the run-up to the September 1 general and regional elections.

“Personalised calls to cash grant beneficiaries: It’s a fact that persons received calls from all political parties; not only the incumbent; all political parties. This is not an incumbency problem,” he said on a Facebook Live commentary.

Dr Ali did not deny or accept responsibility that his party used the cash grant data to call persons urging them to vote for the PPP.

The EUEOM recommended that the 2023 Data Protection Act be operationalised to block a repeat of the malicious use of Guyanese personal data. “Data protection legislation is not in effect, hence politically motivated doxing occurred with impunity and government-held personal data of cash grant receivers appears to have been misused for political gains,” states the observation mission’s report.

The EU observer mission said the incumbent People’s Progressive Party Civic’s (PPPC) call centre used mobile phone numbers of citizens who received cash grants to solicit votes. Such practices, the observers said, do not accord with Guyana’s international commitments, including the EU – Latin America and Caribbean Joint Declaration on a Digital Alliance” Hence, politically motivated doxing occurred with impunity and citizens’ mobile phone numbers collected by the government were used to solicit votes,” the mission said.

Dr Ali also dealt at length with a section of the report that reiterated that the PPP abused its incumbency and so put the opposition political parties at a disadvantage. He said his government campaigned on delivering its 2015 to 2020 election promises of roads, hospitals, subsidies to rice farmers, cash grants and other projects and programmes. “The incumbent has a duty and responsibility like any other country. In the European Union governments campaign on their delivery, governments campaign on their results,” he said.

Th Guyanese leader called on the EU to evaluate the origin of a number of the narratives that appeared to be influenced by locally engaged staff. “I’ve highlighted some areas in the report that are subjective, partisan and completely biased, and cannot by the lowest benchmark, be viewed as fair and balanced,” he said.

The President said the EUEOM report lacked analysis and instead reflected politically biased views. “It is based primarily on complaints by political participants in the elections and their affiliates,” he said.

He queried the type of system there could be if an incumbent did not campaign on its record. “I just wanted to make that very clear that I find that statement objectionable,” he said.

On the longstanding issue of election campaign financing, he said that would be addressed by the constitutional reform process. He said the election observation report makes no mention of that reform.