Dear Editor,
In a recent letter (SN, March 17th, 2019), Mr. Vincent Alexander, Commissioner of GECOM, made a rather cryptic comment that leaves me wondering if the episode I relate below might be part of what he might have meant by “intermediary” in his statement that “The never-held … Houston bye-election in 1961, Boodhoo`s malfeasance in 2006 – 2011 … and the unlawful issuance of proxies and consequentially illegal voting in Mabaruma in the 2018 local government elections represent the alpha, part intermediary and omega of electoral malfeasance in Guyana, to date.”
It must have been in the 1980s, on the ground floor of the Dorothy Bailey Health Centre on South Road. I was an observer of some sort and my job was to ensure that electors had their ID cards and that their names were on the list that was given to observers. I was then working at the Credit Union of the Finance Division of the Guyana National Service (GNS), doing my one year stint as a UG student.
In walked my “supervisor,” Corporal James Adolph, from the Credit Union. He was in mufti of course, but I’d have been able to identify him anywhere by his voice (alone) as he spoke with a slow, strangely mellifluous, slurred, creole tone. The trouble was that he self-identified himself by another name and had an ID card to prove it. I literally jumped out of my seat, partly in sheer amazement that that the mild-mannered, generally impassive and usually drunk Corporal Adolph, was actually doing something remarkable; and partly out of disbelief that I was witnessing something that was part of Guyana’s elections folklore. The rest of the folklore included both the machinery that equipped James with a fake ID card bearing a fake address in Orange Walk, and the subsequent dismissal of my strenuous objections by the Presiding Officer, who simply asked James to swear on a tiny “New Testament,” and then allowed him to vote. It occurred to me that James would have been one of many staff members of the GNS whose primary purpose was to service the machinery of the State, as against the nation.
I mention this episode to say that elections in Guyana are fraught affairs, regardless of the quality of a List of Electors. The acid test of the credibility of elections, perhaps anywhere, is the willingness of the loser(s) to concede defeat. If there is some mechanism (even house-to-house registration) that will guarantee that the declared loser in the upcoming elections would concede defeat, then perhaps we may be able to salvage our polity, and not just our oil potential.
Yours faithfully,
Thomas B. Singh