We, the un­der­signed, here­by call up­on Pres­i­dent Granger and the AP­NU+AFC to im­me­di­ate­ly con­cede the elec­tion in Guyana held on March 2, to the PPP/C, and to fa­cil­i­tate the swear­ing in of Dr Ir­faan Ali as pres­i­dent of the Co-op­er­a­tive Re­pub­lic of Guyana.

What we have been wit­ness­ing over the past 121 days since Guyanese went to the polls are both a con­fir­ma­tion of the way in which de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions are sup­posed to be run, fol­lowed by an at­tempt to negate democ­ra­cy there­by thwart­ing the will of the Guyanese peo­ple.

The elec­tion it­self on March 2 was “per­haps one of the most out­stand­ing, cred­i­ble and well-run elec­tions” ever wit­nessed by most of the elec­tion ob­servers. Scru­ti­neers from all po­lit­i­cal par­ties, the Guyana Elec­tion Com­mis­sion (GECOM), along with ex­ter­nal elec­tion ob­servers from sev­er­al coun­tries, wit­nessed a process where­by all vot­ers: pro­duced pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion or their Na­tion­al Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Card; had their iden­ti­ty ver­i­fied by a Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer against a reg­istry of le­git­i­mate vot­ers; dipped their in­dex fin­ger in in­deli­ble ink to avoid vot­ing du­pli­ca­tion; fold­ed their bal­lot so that the vote re­mained anony­mous; and placed their vote se­cure­ly in­to an of­fi­cial bal­lot box. The elec­tion process was a cum­ber­some one, but com­mend­ably thor­ough, and every elec­tion ob­serv­er, in­clud­ing those from the two main po­lit­i­cal par­ties, was im­pressed by the cal­i­bre and com­mit­ment of the polling sta­tions’ staff and by the rel­a­tive­ly smooth way in which the en­tire elec­tion was han­dled.

The tab­u­la­tion process at each polling sta­tion was metic­u­lous, cred­i­ble and fair, ac­cord­ing to the in­cum­bent coali­tion of­fi­cials, the op­po­si­tion par­ty of­fi­cials, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of GECOM, and lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers.

The State­ments of Poll (SoPs) were placed at the en­trance of each polling sta­tion, demon­strat­ing trans­paren­cy of the count. There were ten elec­toral dis­tricts and 2,339 bal­lot box­es. The re­sults of the tab­u­la­tion of votes re­vealed that 460,352 valid votes were cast in the gen­er­al elec­tion, with the PPP/C op­po­si­tion par­ty se­cur­ing 233,336 votes and the in­cum­bent AP­NU+AFC coali­tion re­ceiv­ing 217,920 votes.

This re­sult, cer­ti­fied by the GECOM, whose man­date it is to de­ter­mine the fi­nal cred­i­ble count, in­di­cat­ed that the op­po­si­tion par­ty had clear­ly won the gen­er­al elec­tion. Yet, the out­come, as the case in Guyanese elec­tions, was a sound vic­to­ry for the PPP/C.

Based on the cer­ti­fied re­sults of the polls, the PPP/C with 50.69 per cent of the vote would have 33 seats in Par­lia­ment and the AP­NU + AFC with 47.34 per cent would have 31 seats.

Yet, it was on­ly af­ter it be­came ob­vi­ous­ly from the SoPs that PPP/C had won the elec­tion that the in­cum­bent par­ty were un­hap­py with the re­sult and tried to fraud­u­lent­ly change the out­come.

For­mer prime min­is­ter of Ja­maica, Bruce Gold­ing, who ob­served the elec­tion in Guyana stat­ed that he had “nev­er seen a more trans­par­ent at­tempt to al­ter the re­sult of any elec­tion. Owen Arthur, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos and the Head of the Com­mon­wealth Ob­serv­er Team put on record im­me­di­ate­ly his ob­ser­va­tion that rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the AP­NU+AFC en­gaged in fraud and wide­spread rig­ging of the elec­tion, on­ly af­ter they re­alised that their par­ty was los­ing to the Op­po­si­tion.

Mia Mot­t­ley (PM of Bar­ba­dos) and Ralph Gon­salves, (PM of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines) have al­so stat­ed that the elec­tions were free and fair, and the re­count cred­i­ble.

The Carter Cen­ter, one of the most re­spect­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions when it comes to the ob­ser­vance of na­tion­al elec­tions around the globe, ques­tioned the change in the tab­u­la­tion of votes in Re­gion 4 and al­so ex­pressed con­cerns about fraud by the AP­NU+AFC coali­tion. Sim­i­lar­ly, the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States Ob­ser­va­tion Mis­sion not­ed a change in the vote count in Re­gion 4 and in a diplo­mat­ic state­ment con­clud­ed that “the process did not reach its prop­er con­clu­sion as stip­u­lat­ed in the elec­toral code.”

We note that on­ly af­ter the AP­NU+AFC re­alised it was los­ing the elec­tion did its rep­re­sen­ta­tives be­gin to com­plain about “ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties” and “fraud­u­lent votes” be­ing cast.

At­tempts were made to dis­en­fran­chise a large num­ber of vot­ers through al­le­ga­tions of vot­ing vi­o­la­tions that have not been sub­stan­ti­at­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the Gov­ern­ment-backed Lowen­field Re­port, there are claims of breach­es in polling pro­ce­dures and al­leged vot­er im­per­son­ation. Yet, no con­crete ev­i­dence has emerged to sup­port these al­le­ga­tions. The al­leged vi­o­la­tions are of the sort that should have been caught by scru­ti­neers of all the po­lit­i­cal par­ties present dur­ing the vot­ing process and the tab­u­la­tion of the votes.

Based on all the facts of the elec­tion, in­clud­ing the even­tu­al re­count, it is ev­i­dent that the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process in Guyana is be­ing un­der­mined by the in­cum­bent AP­NU + AFC. We, there­fore, urge the coali­tion gov­ern­ment of the AP­NU + AFC to do the right and ho­n­ourable thing and con­cede de­feat in this elec­tion.

We urge Pres­i­dent Granger and Prime Min­is­ter Nag­amootoo to prompt­ly recog­nise the PPP/C as the win­ner in this had fought and tight­ly con­test­ed elec­tion, and con­grat­u­late Dr Ir­faan Ali as the new Pres­i­dent, and Brigadier Gen (Ret’d) Mark A Phillips as the new Prime Min­is­ter in a PPP/C gov­ern­ment. It is in the in­ter­est of all Guyanese that the AP­NU-AFC fa­cil­i­tate a smooth tran­si­tion with­out fur­ther de­lay in or­der to up­hold and pre­serve de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance in this won­der­ful coun­try.

We take the judg­ment and words of sev­er­al Caribbean lead­ers se­ri­ous­ly. There is no rea­son to doubt the con­sen­sus opin­ion and ve­rac­i­ty of the Cari­com Ob­serv­er Team, the OAS, the Com­mon­wealth Ob­ser­va­tion Mis­sion, the Carter Cen­ter, the em­bassies and am­bas­sadors of Cana­da, Unit­ed King­dom, Eu­ro­pean Union, and the Unit­ed States. Sev­er­al in­de­pen­dent bod­ies in Guyana, in­clud­ing the Guyana Hu­man Right As­so­ci­a­tion, the George­town Cham­ber of Com­merce the Guyana Bar As­so­ci­a­tion, and even part­ners with­in the AP­NU + AFC coali­tion it­self have de­ter­mined that the 2020 elec­tion was free and fair, and that the re­count was cred­i­ble.

As Caribbean schol­ars and schol­ars with an in­ter­est in the re­gion, ded­i­cat­ed to the pro­duc­tion of au­then­tic and so­cial­ly re­spon­si­ble knowl­edge in our re­gion and be­yond, we feel com­pelled to call on the AP­NU + AFC to im­me­di­ate­ly demit of­fice and have the right­ful win­ner, Dr Ifraan Ali sworn in as pres­i­dent, so that the PPP/C can get on with gov­ern­ing Guyana at a crit­i­cal time in its his­to­ry.

Dr W Andy Knight (Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­ber­ta);

Dr Faeis Ja­far, (UWI);

Dr E J Per­saud (State Univ of New York);

Dr Ho­race Bar­tilow (Uni­ver­si­ty of Ken­tucky);

Win­ston Dook­er­an (au­thor/for­mer Deputy PM of T&T);

Dr Prem Po­dar (Roskilde Uni­ver­si­ty, Den­mark);

Dr Per­cy Hintzen (Flori­da In­ter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty);

Dr Tar­ron Khem­raj (Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da);

Dr Clarence Lu­sane (Howard Uni­ver­si­ty).