Outgoing president Bharrat Jagdeo and political party leaders announced yesterday that a crisis situation was looming in Guyana because of the delay in election results, and pleaded with those seeking to incite violence to stop.
In a no-nonsense press statement from his official residence at Main Street in Georgetown, Jagdeo warned that an example would be made of any perpetrators of rioting or violence and that the security forces were “fully mobilized” to take action under his instructions.
He said, however, that he was “extremely disappointed” the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) had not yet announced preliminary results for last Monday’s polls.
“It is incumbent upon them (GECOM) to accelerate the declaration of the preliminary results at least to as to remove the unease and uncertainty that a lot of our citizens face and which could be used to mobilize people through whisper campaigns, text messages et cetera . . . so I’m urging GECOM to announce the preliminary results which all the parties know already . . . immediately, as soon as possible,” said the outgoing leader.
An hour later, leaders David Granger of APNU, Donald Ramotar of PPP/C, Khemraj Ramjattan of Alliance For Change (AFC) and the United Force’s Peter Persaud converged with Surujbally at GECOM’s media centre to call for peace and assuage the anxiety of Guyanese, especially those in the capital who boarded up business places and left work and school much earlier than usual – leaving the city deserted by 3 p.m.
Granger, also blaming the delay in announcing the results for the rising unease in the country, said the security crisis was being engineered by “certain provocative acts” and APNU had spoken to the police and was compiling a dossier of malpractices in various regions of the country. He added that APNU was committed to accepting the results given by GECOM.
“We feel that a crisis in security is impending and we’ve called on all our supporters . . . and intellectual authors of the crisis to desist from any act which could imperil the security situation in Guyana, and warn that they will bear full responsibility for the consequences of any provocation,” he stated.
Ramjattan told Guyanese that AFC wanted peace and didn’t foresee any violence, but urged all parties to desist from anything that could incite violence. He called on leaders to ensure that any ideas toward violence were diffused. “Guyana is too dear to us,” he added, noting that AFC would respect any result announced by GECOM.
Ramotar said peace was very important to Guyana, and while he understood the anxiety during the waiting period, he was confident in GECOM’s process and was ready to accept the results. “Peace is vital to the development of our country. Democracy is indispensable to the development of our country, and I would condemn those who are trying to incite,” he said.
Persaud said Guyana could not afford to look backward, and appealed to political parties to adhere to the code of conduct which they had all signed.
