Timothy Jonas, leader of the recently formed political party, “A New and United Guyana,” in a video conference with several other public figures, has expressed his frustration with the state of the March 2, 2020 electoral process.
Mr. Jonas highlighted that, in 2011, when there were disputes with the then government (PPP/C) and the then opposition (APNU), the leader of the opposition demanded that GECOM released all Statements of Poll, which they did – leading to a conclusion of the dispute.
However, one is left to speculate why GECOM is so reluctant to release the SOPs now – seeing that this is the same problem repeating itself – and the same measure would go a far way in helping to resolve it.
Below is an excerpt of the conversation during the video conference with Mr. Timothy Jonas, Dr. David Hinds, Professor Charles Sugrim and Mr. Derrick Arjune.
Mr. Timothy Jonas:
The British High Commissioner, the American Ambassador, the European Union Representatives, the Canadian High Commissioner, the Organization of American States and Commonwealth, all of them, walked out in protest…sat through it, said “what are you doing…how can you be doing this?” They all walked out in protest twice: the first time he did his rig and the second time he did his rig. That’s being ignored.
The next thing is that CARICOM came down with the agreement of everyone to supervise a count and was unable to perform because they were obstructed by APNU. That is the other thing. And then the final thing is the point that you raised which is that if this thing is done by statements of poll, and if in 2011, David Granger said, “we need to see your statements of poll,” and GECOM accommodated him and published them for everybody to see, so that the fight died down because there was nothing left to fight about, why is it that in 2020, the same Granger can’t agree and the same GECOM can’t do what they did in 2011 to post up the Statements of Poll…there is only one possible conclusion to draw.
