A clutch of voters registered to a small flat inhabited by a single lady (and her cat)? A polling station running out of ballot papers towards the end of the election day? Voters’ names missing from lists at the polling stations? Voters being alternately locked out of or locked in various polling stations as the deadline for voting passed on election night? A week ago, had you recounted any of these tales, everyone would have shaken their heads and sighed wearily, “Only in Guyana.” Well, apparently not. The polling station with insufficient ballot papers was in Liverpool, the voters who were not listed were in Chester, those locked out of their polling stations were in Sheffield and Haringay. The UK elections system, creaking under the double burden of unusually high turnouts in some areas and an unaccustomed degree of media scrutiny has been found wanting. There is now talk of elections’ petitions and reform of the electoral process.
In a most amusing reversal, the electoral observers shipped in from various far flung corners of the world to watch one of the ancient democracies in action (and presumably learn from the process) have given a string of interviews to the local press listing their reservations about the process and practices they have witnessed. The students have become the teachers. They question the efficacy of a system that is still based on trust: a voter does not have to show any form of identification to vote in an election in the UK and postal votes (where one simply applies for a form and returns it via the post) account for an increasing share of returns. One MP from Sierra Leone put it succinctly: “Your system is a recipe for corruption; it was a massive shock when I saw you didn’t need any identification to vote. In Sierra Leone you need an identity card and also to give your fingerprint. Here you need nothing. In this respect, our own system is more secure than yours.”
Those of us who come from a country where elections have routinely been accompanied by all manner of irregularities, civic unrest and a gripping, gnawing state of tension, have observed the events of the last few days in the UK with absolute fascination, not a little amusement and a sense of deja-vu. There is a tradition of some newspapers in the UK announcing in favour of a particular candidate shortly before election day. This time, several, including The Times, seemed to overstep the boundaries of good taste and sensible restraint and appeared to try to win their readers’ agreement by process of attrition. This was a gross miscalculation: the British famously do not like being told what to do. Not content to declare a preference for a particular candidate, some papers embarked on a campaign to convince their readership by any means necessary (a relentless stream of editorials, cartoons, strategic news items, opinion pieces) of the wisdom of their choice. Some, such as The Independent, to their credit, did not. It is one thing for a newspaper to express an opinion, quite another to repeat it in a variety of guises day after day. If a paper becomes a propaganda sheet for one party, how can it be trusted to report the news fairly and honestly?
Britain is of course a large entity comprised of tens of millions of voters, four separate countries (Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland) and all of the divisions of politics, wealth, geography and resources that these entail. It became clear in the immediate aftermath of the elections that some of these divisions are now virtually indelible: this is a union only in name. Labour, pursuing what was always an unlikely election to a fourth term of office, still managed to win most of the seats in Scotland and Wales and a sizeable slice in the north of England. The Tories have won precisely one seat in Scotland in each of the last two elections whereas Labour actually increased their share of the vote this time and returned 41 of the 59 seats contested. This number of seats is comparable with those in our own National Assembly (65). We agonise repeatedly in Guyana about the inequities of our own current system. Imagine if, as is the case with Scotland, we faced minority rule on a scale similar to this? Suffice to say, there might be a few rumblings of discontent in the rum shops. On two occasions now, a third of the total electorate in the UK has voted for the Liberal Democrats and other minority parties; they have been rewarded each time with less than 15 per cent of the seats. Again, play this out in Guyana and imagine the consequences.
This is the most remarkable aspect of course in the British elections. They understand the truism that democracy is about having your say, not (necessarily) having your way. Even the most frustrated among those unable to vote on Thursday expressed their irritation in what were, by our standards, measured terms. They will seek redress through the system. And their system is convoluted. Three separate departments have responsibility for the electoral process in the UK: the local authorities, the Ministry of Justice and (in a very watered down role) the Elections Commission. Their Returning Officers, the equivalent of our Chief Presiding Officers, took very different decisions when confronted with the same problem (a surge of voters towards closing time) and there were other failures of administration (an insufficiency of ballot papers and inaccurate voters’ lists) which will cause red faces for some time to come. Elections in Guyana continue to pose a major logistical and administrative challenge and they disrupt and destabilise our fragile status quo. We are a long way from perfecting the process. It would appear that we are not alone.
