The rigging cabal has just felt the first slap; more slaps to come

Dear Editor,
On Wednesday, July 15, the US, through their Secretary of State (Foreign Affairs Minister), announced the first set of sanctions against the rigging cabal in Guyana. Mr Mike Pompeo announced the US is revoking visas and green cards for Government officials, others in GECOM, a lawyer, and donors who are enabling the rigging cabal and all their families.

This is just a warning set of sanctions, just to demonstrate that the US means business. Two weeks ago, Khemraj Ramjattan had the temerity to deem sanctions as a bluff. Well the US has an answer – there is no bluffing. This is just the first slap, after a series of warnings. More serious sanctions are on their way should the rigging cabal persist in trying to thief the March 2 elections.
Clearly, the US Government has lost its patience. Clearly, the US Government is not in a mood to wait for five months to elapse.

But if the revocation of the visas of the rigging cabal is the first step of sanctioning for the US, the rigging cabal is about to be hit by a tsunami of sanctions coming from other powerful allies.
The UK, promptly after the US announcement, had its own declaration it is preparing to issue the first set of sanctions on the rigging cabal. The Foreign Affairs Minister of Canada announced that unless the Granger Government allows the smooth transition now, Canada will follow the lead of the US to sanction the rigging cabal.

These are clear signals that the world, which has consistently spoken out against the effort to thief the elections and has issued warning after warning, is about to match words with action. For those who believed that the warnings would never materialise into meaningful action, there is now tangible evidence that no one is in a mood to tolerate flagrant thieving of the elections in Guyana.

David Granger and APNU+AFC have made the first move to leave their rigging cabal partners in GECOM “holding the bag”. The Office of the Presidency issued a statement insisting they are innocent, and all they are doing is waiting on GECOM to do its job. In other words, blaming GECOM for the delay in declaring the results.

Clairmont Mingo, the Returning Officer doing the bidding of APNU+AFC by fraudulently replacing the Statements of Poll for hundreds of polling stations in Region 4, should take note that his handlers in APNU+AFC are willing to throw him under the bus.

Keith Lowenfield, the chief rigger at GECOM, must think long and hard because Granger and APNU+AFC have already shown that they are not willing to take the fall. Of course, Lowenfield and Mingo must know that sanctions from countries like the US, the UK, Canada are only a part of their troubles; charges and jail time are awaiting them.
At the same time, others in GECOM should examine the behaviour of the rigging cabal in APNU+AFC. They will cut and run and leave the boys and girls at GECOM to feel the heavy hand of the law.

But Granger and APNU+AFC should not think it would be easy to walk away and leave their rigging partners at GECOM “holding the bag” for them. No one anywhere in Guyana and around the world is fooled. We know who are the intellectual authors and architects of the rigging, of the fraudulent tinkering with the results. David Granger and the APNU+AFC leadership are fully on board with the wicked scheme to thief the elections. They are on record insisting Mingo did nothing wrong. The Statements of Poll show that Mingo dramatically altered the numbers in hundreds of SOPs. That is a crime. The recount added further proof of Mingo’s crime. Now Granger and APNU+AFC want the Mingo numbers used for a declaration, unequivocally aligning themselves with Mingo’s fraud.

Lowenfield has copies of the SOPs from all 2,339 polling stations. He knew on March 5 and on March 13 that Mingo’s numbers were fraudulent. He still insisted on using those fraudulent numbers to prepare two different reports for GECOM and claim victory for Granger and APNU+AFC. Granger and APNU+AFC endorse these fake reports and, further, are now asking the courts to allow them to use these fake reports to keep Granger as President.

Granger himself agreed to the recount. Now his party is asking the court to throw out the recount and the results of the recount. This after Lowenfield used the recount to present two other fraudulent reports in which he threw out 175,000 and 115,000 votes, claiming these were dead people and persons who were not in Guyana on March 2.

We are not fools; we know that Ulita Moore, Eslyn David, and now Ms. Jones are not the real challengers in court, they are simply surrogates for Granger and APNU+AFC. None of these persons has the capacity to hire these lawyers. Let us see who are paying these lawyers. For Granger and APNU+AFC to think no one knows it is APNU+AFC who are the real challengers in court is to be stupid.

Their insistence that everyone, including international stakeholders, must wait until the court disposes of the matter is hoping that everyone will cooperate with their brinkmanship and the gamesmanship. The latest court matter is asking the court to throw out the recount order and the recount results. The CCJ has already ruled on this matter. The Guyana High Court cannot throw out the ruling of the apex court. Their request for the Chief Justice to order GECOM to use Mingo’s fraud to declare the election results is insulting to the CJ, who has already ruled that Mingo’s fraud was created from an illegal process. This court matter is designed to stop GECOM from declaring the true results of the elections. It also whimsically urges the court to permit them to thief.

The US and others have given the signal to Granger and APNU+AFC that they cannot hide behind the court anymore. The foreign interference defense is hopeless. These countries are implementing values and policies they live by. We agreed by our own signatures to many treaties that we will live with these values and policies. Democracy is something we agreed to as the global governance foundation. We cannot be part of the global family and want to thief elections.

Free and fair elections are obligations we agreed to in order to be part of the global family, to be part of the United Nations. We must therefore live by these values, or announce to the world we do not want to be part of the global family. We could never survive.

The time has come for Granger and APNU+AFC to step aside. The time has come to swear in Dr Irfaan Ali as Guyana’s 9th President. The time has come to commence the 12th Parliament. The time has come for Dr. Ali’s new cabinet to start the work of moving Guyana forward.

Sincerely,
Dr Leslie Ramsammy