Dear Editor,
To use the famous pet phrase of the PPP’s Bharrat Jagdeo: show us the evidence. It is fine and dandy for a party to claim irregularities and to expect those irregularities to be investigated. It is another thing to raise the spectre of irregularities days after the election itself when the PPP had SOPs from virtually all polling stations in its hands by nightfall on election day and had every opportunity to raise its concerns immediately. While a party is entitled to the legal process of verification allowed within the law, those processes cannot be used to delay the announcement of a valid election approved by observers and the election body itself as valid.
More critically, evidence must be presented to trigger Gecom to engage in any process of rechecking or verification. One cannot ask for a recount of all ballots without showing evidence that misfeasance occurred on every single ballot. It is an absurd exercise to try to pull this kind of decrepit wool over the eyes of a patient public. To date, the PPP has failed to produce evidence of the misfeasance it claims. It has failed to produce documents, photographs, papers, anything at all. It is just claiming and has its supporters worked up. These supporters do not recognize that claiming these irregularities this late after the election, the PPP is yet again demonstrating its incompetence. For any party to raise these complaints this late, reeks of pure ineptitude. So, here they are feigning competence after the horse has bolted the barn and is gone forever.
Honestly, in my view, the PPP knows it lost the election. The final tally from Gecom says it lost the election. What these escapades are really about is self-preservation, continuation of the domination of the PPP party and martyrdom. This exercise is seeming more one of trying to delay to buy time. The second agenda behind these ludicrous claims is likely a deliberate ploy by the Jagdeoites to hold onto the leadership of the PPP if it falls from power. They are hoping to fool supporters into accepting the age-old narrative of stolen elections and electoral fraud while it is their sickness that led these same supporters to this point where Gecom has declared the PPP lost the election and observers have confirmed the PPP lost the election. They refuse to concede and in doing so, they will be legally forced from office and will turn around and try to use this perfectly legitimate act as political fodder to con PPP supporters all over again that they are a bunch of saints. They want martyrdom and are creating the premise for claiming such martyrdom when the fact of the matter is their utter incompetence, arrogance, hubris, conceit and selfishness is the reason the party is at this point today.
Whether the PPP reforms, is going to be a major question. Some have stated that a tectonic struggle will ensue for the soul of the PPP. I am not going to hold my breath. The PPP remains as dictatorial and as dominated as it has ever been. Even in the glaring evidence of the Jagdeoites controlling Freedom House, mangling the election and making complete fools of themselves, the PPP membership remains mute. The problem is if the PPP fails to reform, the election result has confirmed it has the most to lose. Mono-ethnic politics have now been damaged with this election result. Relying on one ethnic group to win power is not going to work any more. Racial rhetoric and race-baiting has been exposed as a reckless electoral strategy. The PPP needs to become genuinely multi-ethnic and it cannot with this current cast of characters pulling the strings at Freedom House. Amerindians, Mixed Races and Africans will not venture to the PPP with this group in charge. If the PPP fails to reform and the coalition delivers in governance, the PPP will bleed votes to the coalition.
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
