APNU/AFC election petition will expose its own attempts to rig elections – Nandlall

Attorney General Anil Nandlall said he was happy that the Opposition A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) has an election petition challenging the results of the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections as it will create the platform needed to bring to light the coalition’s own attempts to rig the elections.

Speaking during a televised programme on the State-owned National Communications Network (NCN), Nandlall pointed out that the election petition filed by the APNU/AFC was bound to fail, since it was based on the coalition’s unsubstantiated claims of voters’ fraud.
“I am happy that they have brought the petition, because they give us another opportunity to get certain members of staff of GECOM (Guyana Elections Commission) in a witness box and get some of their members – like Volda Lawrence, for example, to come and tell us under oath and under cross-examination how her signature is on a declaration made by [Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont] Mingo. All of that information and how that spreadsheet, from whence did it come, that Mingo used as his basis of the declaration…,” he noted.

According to Nandlall, who was one of the PPP/C’s leading legal advisors over the past five months during the electoral impasse, his party always wanted this matter to go before the courts but by the proper process, that is, through an election petition and not the series of litigation that were filed by the coalition post elections to delay the declaration of the final results.
“But now all that which they were avoiding and that which their agents are hiding at GECOM – all that will come out now in the court and for that reason, I am very happy that they are now in a court where orders will be made,” Nandlall said.
One of those orders, the Attorney General contended, will have to be for the release of the Statements of Poll (SoPs) that emanated from the initial vote count following the March 2 polls.
The APNU/AFC coalition filed its election petition in the High Court on Monday to challenge the elections as well as the national recount exercise.
However, while the petition documents evidence of the coalition’s claims of voters’ irregularities, this did not include the SoPs, which the APNU/AFC has been refusing to release for months.
According to Nandlall, a large part of winning any case in court is proving you have just cause.
“The basis of any election is the Statements of Poll. Now you are going to the court to tell a judge or to ask a judge to set aside a whole election and put a government out of office – set aside that political party’s results as fraudulent and you are not putting forward your results? You are not putting forward your case? So you want this judge to throw this Government out, set aside all this results that his party claimed they got and the Elections Commission declared, but you are not showing why and what is your evidence that you have. You want to go in there as the next government and you are not showing your qualification, and you’re not putting your case out?” he questioned.
Nandlall, who is now serving his second tenure as Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister after previously holding the post from 2011 to 2015, went on to say that the coalition lacked moral underpinning and foundation.
“In law and in litigation, like everything else, your credibility matters… A large part of winning court is at least persuading the court that you are sincere, that you have a real just cause, that your case is based upon good faith, that you have a genuine loss that you have suffered and you have to create that impression. To do so, you can’t approach the court with unclean hands. You can’t approach the court and withhold material information; you are enjoined to make a full and frank disclosure of all the facts – even those that are against you and that is how you win the court over without even uttering a word,” Nandlall posited.
Despite initially claiming victory at the March 2 polls, the APNU/AFC has stubbornly refused to release its SoPs.
However, after the 33-day recount, which was agreed to by then President and coalition Leader David Granger and then Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo, established that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) won the elections by 15,416 votes, the APNU/AFC alleged that the elections were marred by voters’ fraud – claiming that dead and migrated people voted.
After filing the petition on Monday, the coalition’s leading lawyer, Senior Counsel Roysdale Forde contended that the SoPs no longer had any relevance. (G8)