AFC ‘will not apologise until after its own review” of rigging attempt 4 years ago – Hughes

Leader of the Alliance For Change (AFC) Nigel Hughes has indicated that the party will not apologise for any alleged actions taken by its members while in office or during the 2020 General and Regional Elections without verification.

Hughes, who was at the time responding to a call made by Vice President and The People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) General Secretary Bharrat Jagdeo for AFC to publicly acknowledge its ‘wrongdoing’ before and after the 2020 election, stated that as leader, he will not prejudge the party’s actions without a throughout investigation being conducted.

On this point, he revealed that a detailed and comprehensive review of AFC’s performance in office is ongoing, as the party aims to ensure transparency and accountability is at the forefront of its new agenda.

“I can’t prejudge. Apology is premised on the fact that there is a fault. I’m not saying that we will not find faults, but when we have completed that process of reviewing what it is we did and didn’t do during the period in office and similarly what it is we did and didn’t do during the 2020 elections, then we can have a discussion on that”.

“We’ve already had a former Minister of the Alliance for Change say that he thinks that the Alliance for Change should apologise. Now that will be taken into account whenever we’re doing the review, which should be pretty shortly, and if he’s willing to come and make a presentation on why he is of that opinion, all of that information will be received. At the end of that process, we will have a very clear idea of our steps, missteps, and steps that were favorable, but you cannot at this point want me to give a blanket apology about the 2020 election,” Hughes said.

During his most recent press conference, Jagdeo also pointed out the active role the AFC and its surrogates played, in trying to rig the 2020 election… including a list of dead people the AFC claimed voted during the election.

In response to the VP’s statement, Hughes called for the emptying of all closets without exempting any political party or its members.

“Don’t let us get selective in our morality,” he said.

During the 2020 elections the AFC was a member of the APNU/AFC then Coalition Government, which undermined the electoral process. For five months following the March 2 elections, the APNU/AFC Coalition employed various delay tactics, including filing multiple court cases to stall the official declaration of results, which were ultimately confirmed through a CARICOM-led national recount.

At present former Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo, ex-GECOM Deputy CEO Roxanne Myers, former PNCR Chairperson Volda Lawrence, GECOM employees Sheffern February, Enrique Livan, Michelle Miller, Denise Babb-Cummings, and Carol Smith-Joseph, are before the court facing elections related fraud charges.

The election report of former CEO Lowenfield claimed that the APNU/AFC coalition garnered 171,825 votes, while the PPP/C gained 166,343 votes.

How he arrived at those figures is still unknown, since the certified results from the recount exercise supervised by GECOM and a high-level team from CARICOM pellucidly showed that the PPP/C won with 233,336 votes, while the Coalition garnered 217,920.

Together, these nine defendants confront 33 counts of election-related fraud, focused on alleged efforts to manipulate voting results.

The A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), whose largest member is the PNC, had merged with the AFC in 2015 for the elections that year. The two parties had also jointly contested in the 2020 elections.

The AFC, however, formally broke its coalition with APNU back in December 2022.