Dear Editor,
The voting for elections 2015 is over and preliminary results show the APNU+AFC has won the general elections with 33 seats to the 32 seats for the PPP/C. However, the announcement has done nothing to remove the uncertainty hanging over the country as the PPP/C has signalled that it will mount a legal challenge to in the courts, citing a number of grounds.
When the PPP/C produces its evidence of elections day improprieties, due note will have to be taken. However, to use a cliché, elections are a process and not an event and the PPP/C has itself shamelessly abused the 2015 electoral process, bringing into serious doubt the fairness of these elections. There is some irony, and not a little shamelessness, that the PPP/C would legally challenge any elections since its hands are filled with dirt. I doubt that its egregious conduct would have escaped the attention of the local and international observers and most especially the mission from the Commonwealth Secretariat.
They would have taken note of the PPP/C campaign led by former President Mr. Jagdeo. Jagdeo as leader of the Commonwealth observers of the 2015 Sri Lanka presidential elections had identified as deficiencies many of the electoral practices in which he and his party have engaged as a matter of routine.
Some of these are particularly pertinent since they undermine the very concept of free and fair elections. The following principles and practices laid down by the Court of Appeal of Tanzania in the case Attorney General and Others v Kabourou [1995] 2 LRC 757 would resonate with international and local observers:
(1) There is an underlying constitutional principle, implied by various provisions of the Constitution, which require democratic elections to be free and fair.
(2) The underlying principle that elections should be free and fair means that an election which was generally unfree and unfair was not an election at all, as envisaged by the Constitution and the [Tanzania] Elections Act.
(3) Anything which rendered an election unfree and/or unfair was a valid ground to annul the election.
(4) Corrupt practices under the [Tanzania] Elections Act 1985 include not only non-compliance with the Act or directives thereunder, such as bribery, but also extensive misconduct rendering an election unfair. In the case referred to, the undertaking to repair the road in the constituency was considered as having been given with the corrupt motive of influencing voters and amounted to electoral bribery which had affected the results of the election and rendered it unfair.
(5) Government-owned broadcasting, television [and other service] are under a duty to take the initiative to offer political parties equal air time.
(6) Presidential and parliamentary elections must be conducted not only in conformity with the Constitution and Elections Act, but with due observance of the general laws. Defamation is an offence and legally indefensible or inexcusable defamation repeated in furtherance of the election campaign at well-attended rallies affect the results of elections.
(7) The principle of fairness in an election requires that a president [and ministers] should not use government property or employees during an election campaign in a manner which was unnecessary for his [their] security or discharge of his [their] professional responsibilities.
Regardless of who wins Monday’s elections, we as Guyanese as well as those who make grand pronouncements on our elections need to be reminded that fairness and “free” are conjoined and inseparable. Our legislators and elections regulator have not shown any appetite for fairness in elections.
I am hoping that sooner rather than later someone will challenge the fairness of elections and that it even reaches the CCJ for a pronouncement that will be respected throughout the region. As we have witnessed over the past months, abuses have been taken to such extreme lengths in Guyana that no one can truly describe our elections as “free and fair”. Sanity requires that we do something about it.
Yours faithfully,
Christopher Ram
