Irfaan Ali retires David Granger after 5 months election declaration battle
Former President David Granger (L) and newley Elected President Irfaan Ali (R)
Mohamed Irfaan Ali was on Sunday afternoon sworn in as Guyana’s 9th Executive President. His swearing-in as president comes on the five months anniversary of a delayed declaration of the results of the election which were held on March 02, 2020.
Ali who headed the list as Presidential Candidate for the Peoples Progressive Party Civic (PPP) came up against David Granger who headed the list for the A Partnership For National Unity+ Alliance Force Change coalition.
While the activities on Election Day was considered the smooth by all players and observers involved, the APNU+AFC began to send signals that it lost the elections by first claiming that Russians used computers and other electronic devices and gadgets to hack the electoral process which is done with the use of a pencil and paper.
There was then the fiasco at the Region 4 Returning Officer’s headquarters in Georgetown where after a process of proper counting of ballots was done, figures began to be called out randomly from a spreadsheet by the Returning Officer who could not say where the numbers he was calling and which were different from those on the Statement of Polls differ.
This development led to a court injunction and subsequent recount which was agreed upon by GECOM and the parties involved in the elections.
The APNU+AFC claimed that several dead and migrated persons voted during the elections and were asking for a number of things including for the elections to be nullified and or that the votes of migrated and dead people be excluded from the recount. They, however, failed to provide concrete evidence to support their claims.
The recount followed a number of court proceedings which ended up at the Caribbean Court of Justice and the latter court proceedings which ended last week in the local Court of Appeal which ruled that the recount was valid and that the numbers from that process should be used to declare the winner of the elections.
Today Sunday, GECOM convened a meeting with the commissioners on both sides of the house and during that meeting, the Chief Elections Officer who was mandated to submit the results of the elections using the recount figures failed to so, he showed up without the report.
The APNU+AFC commissioners then asked the chair to facilitate a process for David Granger and Bharrat Jagdeo to meet and have discussions on the way forward.
Jagdeo however refused the offer and said that he would only meet with Granger after the results of the election are declared.
That rejection by Granger then saw a statement from the president which was very soft in tone but suggested that the APNU+AFC was holding still to its arguments that the recount figures cannot be the basis on which the elections are declared given the many issues which were uncovered and that the declaration would be challenged in an elections petition.
The commission then reconvened their meeting following which the Mohamed Irfaan Ali was declared President-Elect of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana.
Granger then issued another statement saying that he has had marinated from the start that he would respect the lawful declaration by the Elections Commission and now that the declaration has been made, he as acknowledge it.
Just under three hours of being declared the President-Elect, Mohamed Irfaan Ali was sworn in as the President of Guyana at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre.
