The PNC seems bent on oblivion. One would have thought that given its history of rigging elections between 1968 and 1985, and given that similar allegations were made at its last party Congress, it would have viewed the matter of cleaning up its image as one of high priority. But no, last Sunday again, it opened itself to accusations that the ballot to choose office bearers for the party’s Georgetown District was not unsullied. This perception was lent credibility by the disorderly scenes which preceded the poll, when, as we reported on Monday, persons could be heard shouting that they were not receiving any ballot papers, and others called out that some people were receiving more than one. Our report went on to say that one man stood at the microphone shouting, “We cannot want to go to the PPP/C and talk about rigging elections when we are doing the same here; this must end now; we must stop this and we must start doing things right now.” A prophet in his own country, you might say.
With all the shouting and confusion the sober-minded members of the party withdrew even before the result was announced, along with Mr Aubrey Norton and his supporters. Mr Norton had stood against Ms Volda Lawrence for the post of Chairman of the District, and he claimed subsequently that the voting process had been fraudulent. Ms Lawrence, of course, is perceived as being part of Mr Corbin’s circle, and since the Georgetown District provides the largest number of delegates to a Congress, its chair and executive take on a strategic significance whenever there is a contest for the leadership of the party. As it was, Ms Lawrence won the ballot, not by a narrow margin, but by a landslide.
What made this particular party branch election a matter of such interest is the fact that there is indeed a Congress coming up this year. Mr Corbin’s leadership has been under scrutiny for some time, and at the last Congress two years ago it came under direct challenge from ‘Team Alexander,’ as they called themselves. In the aftermath of that encounter, the upper echelon of the party was split, and some long-standing members either withdrew or were summoned before a disciplinary committee. All in all, the legacy of those events has been one of bitterness and animosity.
The chaos and allegations at last week’s vote did not inhibit Mr Corbin from exhorting the Georgetown members “to move forward as a united party,” and make the District into one “united army” and ensure that the party was victorious at the upcoming local government election. But all the fuzzy talk about unity, being in the same “fold” and ‘embracing each other,’ was soon undermined by the revelation in our Thursday edition that Mr Corbin had written Mr Norton threatening him with a libel suit for what he had said to this newspaper.
Mr Corbin himself, who was present during the proceedings, was quoted as saying that while there had been a few reports which the party’s general secretary would have to investigate, “from these resounding results there can be no doubt about the general will of the members of the Georgetown District.” The following day he told Stabroek News that he was present for the voting process and would be “aware if any fraudulent activities occurred.” For his part, Mr Norton itemized the problems with the vote, including the fact that there was no roll call before the ballot, so there was no way of knowing how many delegates were present, that more ballot papers were printed than there were delegates and that the voters’ list was padded, among other things. These are not minor allegations, and cannot be brushed aside with statements about the result reflecting “the general will” of the membership of Georgetown. A large margin of success does nothing to allay suspicions of lack of transparency let alone more serious possible defects in the conduct of the poll.
Mr Corbin himself was around in the era when national elections were not conducted in a free and fair manner, and therefore he should be sensitive to public concerns that the PNC has not changed its ways. In this new era, the party will be judged on how it conducts its own internal elections, and in the light of what is alleged to have happened at the last Congress and now the Georgetown District, the public perception is that its inherent flaws remain unaddressed. The leader of the PNCR has to understand that the issue is not whether Ms Lawrence legitimately won the chairmanship even if some irregularities might have taken place; it is quite possible that indeed she did. Rather the issue is about the conduct of the entire election process, and how that process is perceived by the party membership and the outside world. As various commentators have said, if the PNCR cannot run its own elections in a way which is recognized to be above reproach, then it will never be trusted by an electorate to run a country, or to run local government bodies, possibly even in some sectors of its own heartland.
Mr Corbin’s comments last week open him to accusations that he is not aware of the necessity in the current circumstances of improving the party’s image where its history of rigging is concerned. There were many witnesses to the confusion in the balloting process last Sunday, as well as to the complaints about the distribution of ballot papers cited above. In the midst of the chaos Mr Corbin himself had to go to the microphone to try and calm things down and ask people to go to their seats, so how on earth could he then assure the public that he was present and so would have been “aware” of any fraud? In that kind of noise and muddle no one could be certain of what was going on. A voting process has not just to be transparent in reality, but has to be seen to be so. As a matter of fact, the election in this instance did not require the leader’s presence at all, and he would have been better advised to stay home.
These days the credibility of a political entity is intimately connected to that entity’s adherence to democratic principles and procedures. As the unnamed man at the microphone quoted above told the delegates before he was physically stopped, how can the party talk to the PPP/C about rigging, if things cannot be done right at home. At the time of writing, Mr Corbin had not heeded this sensible advice. His problem is, however, that if he allows this perception of internal party shenanigans to continue, he might well be setting the PNCR on track for relegation to third position in the political race come 2011.
