Dear Editor,
APNU protested the delay in the elections and rightly so. It protested for receipt of the SOPs and rightly so. Gecom gave APNU electronic copies of the SOPs for every single one of the 2076 polling stations on December 8, 2011. At the time of writing this letter, we are now 7 days past and nothing, not a single peep, from APNU. They had 7 days to count 2076 SOPs.
There is rank hypocrisy at play here. If APNU had a legitimate right to protest Gecom’s sloth, disorganisation and inefficiency which delayed the announcement of election results and delivered such results some three days after the elections, why shouldn’t we condemn APNU for sitting on the SOPs for some 7 days and counting and no report on its findings?
Does it take 7 days to count and verify SOPs for 2076 polling stations? Is this delay a deliberate tactic by APNU to keep its protesters in the streets meandering from one place to another and protesting for what appears to be protesting‘s sake?
Or did APNU find nothing of importance or any serious discrepancies and isn’t courageous enough to stand before the people and say it found nothing of importance because it would look like a fool after all its prancing around?
The last utterance from APNU was that it wanted the actual hard copies of the SOPs.
Well, what is preventing APNU from going down to Gecom with its counting champions and mathematical whizzes and reviewing the actual hard copies of the SOPs along with other parties, their representatives and the observers?
What is preventing APNU from performing a controlled count in an observed setting?
Why hasn’t APNU and for that matter any other party posted the SOPs on their websites now that they have the file in pdf format?
What is really wrong with these political parties that want us to pour out onto the streets and chant in front of residences and police stations but who exercise such chilling secrecy in releasing public documents? The same goes for Gecom.
It should publish the SOPs on its website and allow the public to do its own counting. APNU has to stop the pussyfooting, the sidewinding and the tomfoolery and tell us what it found. APNU needs to just get on with the business of fixing this country in Parliament.
Mr Granger has to take a stand as this fiasco that went from legitimate and fruitful protest to barren protest with little political value to APNU’s long-term prospects, is derailing his credibility.
He energised the APNU base but it seems like his efforts are being hijacked by unthinking elements that see rushing into the streets over every perceived grievance as the only way to solicit a solution. Some of those elements are buried deep within the PNC as are some found in the handful that came under the APNU banner. I did ask openly what will happen with Granger and Corbin essentially operating in the same sphere side by side.
The lack of clarity surrounding the protests, the disorganisation, the shifting agenda that is becoming increasingly mindless, the seeming lack of strategy, the definite failure to comprehend long-term repercussions of current actions and the headlong rush to the streets suggest there is no
real unity of leadership in APNU. One wonders if there is an ideological struggle over how to approach the results flaring up between the APNU congregation of Granger-Roopnaraine and friends and the traditional PNC camp led by Corbin, Greenidge, Alexander, Basil Williams and friends.
They should stop the grandstanding, release their findings and get protesters off the streets as they can still boycott who they want to boycott from the comfort of their homes. They should stop being politically dumb by failing to see that the few short-term gains from these protests will be outnumbered by the long-term repercussions to the future of APNU with this mess.
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
