As was said in the May 17th Sunday Stabroek editorial, it is high time for former President Ramotar and his associates to put country before party. The PPP/C has to lay to rest the flimsy claims that the May 11th elections were rigged and get on with the business of performing an effective opposition role in Parliament.
The demonstration on Thursday outside of GECOM led by Mr Ramotar and which included former Prime Minister Hinds and a number of ex ministers showed that the party is completely out of touch with reality. It was an attempt at continuing to fabricate a myth that the PPP/C cannot lose a fair election. This nonsensical line was perpetuated at Freedom House on Friday by the party hierarchy which included former President Jagdeo. The party stated that it was preparing to internationalise its claim that the elections were rigged.
The PPP is free to present whatever case it would like on the elections and pursue an election petition. However, to the informed citizens at Charity, Springlands and Aishalton it would be a grand exercise in futility. Not even the statement issued on Saturday by its three commissioners on GECOM contained any compelling complaint of irregularity during the elections. The international community has pronounced on the elections of May 11th, 2015. All of the key fraternal bodies of which Guyana is a part have given the elections a clean bill of health: Caricom, the Commonwealth and the Organisation of American States in particular. Added to that, the most credible non-government observer mission, the Carter Center on the 100th mission of its acclaimed observing career and whose interventions were fervently welcomed by the PPP in 1990 for the landmark 1992 general elections has also declared the elections to be fair. It would not have escaped the notice of the PPP/C that in addition to the Western countries, India, Russia, Brazil and Mexico have also recognized the Granger administration. So who exactly will the PPP/C present its case to? Rogue administrations with which the Jagdeo administration had flirted? The Communist Party in Pyongyang?
What the PPP/C has also studiously ignored is that when elections were patently rigged here between 1968 and 1985 the claims of the PPP and other opposition parties received solid backing from civil society groups here and international organizations. Credible dossiers were compiled and much information came from non-PPP sources. Indeed, it was the voices of the ordinary citizens about their experiences in voting, human rights organizations, churches, the free press and labour leaders that added the muscle to the case presented by the PPP. In this instance, the PPP/C stands utterly alone. There is no organisation or institution standing with it on its rigging claim. Even its traditional supporters here in the private sector and other arenas have shunned its claim.
By continuing to make vacuous statements and claims about rigging -which began to surface after the 2011 election when the PPP lost its majority in Parliament – what Mr Ramotar and others are doing is assailing the democratic credentials of the country and deepening divisions in the country. They are also debasing the heroic battle waged by the party and many others between 1968 and 1985 against patently rigged and crooked-as-barb-wire elections and which culminated in the return to democracy in 1992. From championing the fullest expression of the right to vote, the PPP, like the sorest of losers, is attempting to tarnish the electoral system and safeguards which it happily accepted between 1992 and 2006 when it was winning general elections. It would be well aware that counting at the place of poll presents the sturdiest defence against any rigging and that the existence of multiple copies of the Statement of Poll from polling stations makes it difficult to trick numbers.
It is clear that the PPP/C never expected to lose on May 11th and had counted on the venomous campaign mounted by former President Jagdeo, allied to the wanton use of state resources to gather votes. It miscalculated just as it did in its analysis of whether APNU and the AFC would form a pre-election alliance on February 14th this year.
It may be that the PPP/C is amping up the noise level over perceived irregularities in the hope of some sort of deal to protect certain pre-elections positions. It has little negotiating basis for such and would have to address these concerns in a full engagement with the new government. That aside it has much work ahead in serving the interests of the over 200,000 persons who voted for it earlier this month. The place for such representation is the 11th Parliament and the PPP/C must make the fullest use of this opportunity including the chairing of key bodies such as the Public Accounts Committee.
