“By any definition anywhere in the world, a 75% win is a massive win” – Jagdeo debunks APNU lies surrounding local gov’t elections

General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Dr Bharrat Jagdeo has disproved the PNC-led A Partnership for National Unity’s (APNU) declaration of ‘sweeping’ wins in several PPP strongholds, highlighting that these hasty assertions are misleading the public.

The first of the lies is the declaration that the APNU has won the elections, to which the GS pointed out that the PPP has won about 75 per cent of the seats contested.

Dr Jagdeo was speaking at his weekly press conference at Freedom House on Thursday.

“They are saying that they won the elections, and they made great inroads and that the PPP did not achieve what it set out to do. We have won 906 of 1220 seats. By any definition anywhere in the world, a 75 per cent win is a massive win. We have won the majority of the votes, we had more than 60 LAA’s (local authority areas) and we had about 66 overall, where we won the largest number of votes in those areas,” he explained.

Opposition Leader, Aubrey Norton is also claiming that his party has won the Plegt Anker/Kortberaadt area, and that there was a ‘whitewash’ in Region Five in favour of the APNU.

“The fact is that they won the Plegt Anker constituency by five votes, and five tendered ballots were issued by the PO. We asked for a recount on the five tendered ballots, and it showed that these were all votes for the PPP. He made an error in issuing tendered ballots, and that is why I explained the last time why we asked for a recount. We don’t know how GECOM will deal with that matter, because it is not an error in the vote, it is an error in the PO giving the wrong ballot. So, if GECOM accepts this, that Plegt Anker constituency will be tied. They didn’t make major inroads into Plegt Anker,” he clarified.

Dr Jagdeo said the PPP also made inroads in Korthberaath East, an APNU stronghold in the Plegt Anker constituency.

The PPP held the majority votes in certain Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDC), including Seafield/Tempe, where the party garnered six seats in comparison to three in 2018, and in Hamlet/Chance NDC, where votes moved from 17 to 102.

“The last time in Region Five the Woodland Farm NDC was tied. We won that NDC now outright. We won several NDCs in Region Five. At No.5 Village, in 2018, we had two votes. In 2023 it increased to 206 votes, and this is a stronghold of APNU. So, who made inroads?

“They claim they made inroads in Region Five in Blairmont, where in 2018 APNU got 265, and now they have about 378, but when you add the AFC vote, because they contested separately in 2018, they actually had lower votes than the APNU/AFC combined. When you combine the two votes, APNU and AFC in 2018, got less votes in these elections than the combined votes at that time in the Blairmont NDC. So again, they did not pick up votes there. In fact, they lost votes,” Dr Jagdeo pointed out.