Disciplined Services must not be misled, their votes have counted

Dear Editor,

By 4th March, 2020, APNU intimated that they had won the election. Granger, Williams, Patterson, Ramjattan, Hughes and many other party officials declared that the election had been conduction fairly and credibly, and that the count done at the places of poll had been properly done, and that the SOP’s reflected an APNU victory, and that the assessment of the SOP’s by Mingo was accurate. They claimed victory. Importantly, although the PPP published their SOP’s to show this lie, APNU refused to do so, and Mingo and GECOM refused to do so. A secret victory.

Now that the recount is in progress, and new SOR’s are being prepared, APNU is no longer claiming that they won, or that the SOP’s reflect an APNU victory. They are noticeably silent on the now invisible Mingo.

Now, their position is that the SOP’s and SOR’s cannot be relied upon, because so many irregularities took place on election day. APNU have created three spectres. First, they say that dead people voted. Then, they say that overseas residents voted. And finally, they say that the members of the Disciplined Services have been disenfranchised by an internal GECOM conspiracy not to stamp their ballots so that those ballots will be rejected.

It is this latter myth that I wish to expose. I am prompted by a Letter to the Editor from Lt-Col. (Rtd) George Gomes in yesterday’s SN “crying out loud against the effort by the PPP to have GECOM not count their votes… because they are unstamped.”  That trained army officer asserts that “PPP agents did not stamp the Disciplined Services ballots, as they were required to, after these ballots were taken to specific polling stations in the Regions on Elections Day. That over eight thousand (8,000) Disciplined Services votes were not stamped in the PPP strongholds in Districts 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6, is not accidental or coincidental. This was a deliberate large-scale rigging attempt by the PPP.”

The Disciplined Services (DS) voted before E-Day, and their ballots were intermingled into the ballot boxes on E-day by Gecom officials. Batches of between thirty and forty such ballots are distributed, and the Presiding Officer at the Place of Poll should stamp his allocated batch of ballots with the numbered stamp of that polling place, and intermix the ballots with the ballots cast at that polling place that day.

I wish to present the following facts which have emerged during the recount:

1. Of the 287,358 ballots counted so far, the number of rejected ballots is 2673, or less than one percent, certainly within the range of normal for an election;
2. Those rejected ballots include ballots showing more than one X, or no X at all, or showing the name of the voter, or showing an X or check in a location where the intention of the voter cannot be determined, and where the ballot is unstamped, this last item representing only a small proportion of the total rejected ballots so far;
3. The largest number of rejected ballots so far seen in a single box is about 20, of which only a fraction (if any) would be unstamped. So there is clearly no correlation between unstamped ballots and DS batches of 30 – 40 ballots.

I am alarmed that Col. Gomes would claim that ‘over 8,000 DS votes were not stamped.’ This is an untruth. So far, there have been only 2673 rejected ballots, and only a minority of those would be as a result of lack of a stamp. Where does Gomes get his number from?

I am alarmed that Col. Gomes would add to his lie by blaming imaginary non-stamping on ‘PPP agents’ and locating it in ‘PPP strongholds’. More untruths, but incendiary untruths. The duty to stamp is on the Presiding Officers (PO’s), and from all evidence so far, those PO’s have kept that duty.

I wish to say to the hard working and patriotic members of the Disciplined Services that your leaders are lying to you. Your votes have counted. Please do not be misled.

Yours faithfully,

Timothy Jonas