Now withdrawn Global Witness report was aimed at influencing elections – Trotman

The APNU/AFC government has blasted Global Witness for its withdrawal of its report “Signed Away” as the former governing coalition said that the body allowed itself to be used “further political and economic interests prior to Guyana’s 2020 elections.”

Member of Parliament and former Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman in a statement on behalf of the parliamentary opposition said that the timing of the release of the report, a mere month before the March General and Regional Elections was “neither coincidental nor without deliberate purpose.” Trotman said too that Global Witness now finds its it convenient to withdraw the entire report as he accused it of “clumsily” using the “fig leaf of environmental causes.”

Trotman described the act as “shameful and repugnant” as he said it constitutes subversive “political interference in the affairs of a sovereign state’s electoral process” with the aim of influencing the outcome of an election.

From the onset the APNU/AFC while in government had been critical of the report and in February 2020 it described the report as “sensationalist, agenda-driven and extraordinarily speculative.”

It said then that Global Witness presented no evidence of corruption or malpractice on the part of the Government or its officials as it called the report as a “cunning and calculated attack on a sovereign state with a duly elected Government mere weeks before an election.”