Two weeks ago, in dealing with the global increase in elections manipulation, I noted that in ‘How to Rig an Election,’ Nicholas Cheesman and Brian Klass identified six distinct but complementary strategies that are usually used to rig elections: (1) gerrymandering, (2) vote buying, (3) repression (4) digital hacking (5) stuffing the ballot boxes and (6) duping the international community into legitimizing poor-quality polls. They concluded that ‘the most effective autocrats don’t leave election rigging to the last minute. … [They] begin manipulating the polls well before voting begins. If these efforts work well, vote tampering and political violence never become necessary because the result has already been determined’ (Cheeseman Nicholas and Brian Klaas (2018) Yale University Press).
Guyana has had its fill of elections manipulation and the most controversial and important issues today surrounds accusations of pre-election vote tampering. In its recent decisions on matters having to do with the no-confidence vote (NCV) and appointment of the chair of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) has largely relegated concerns about the quality of the elections list and the date for elections to the realm of politics but legal concerns are dominating the discourse. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle said that politics is the master art because it determines all other things. This includes even what is the law so let us strive for an objective political analysis.
The present government claims that the expired voters list is substantially padded and can be only rectified by a house-to-house registration (H2H). Around the same time as the government began to make its claims, the opposition also began to argue that there is a continuous registration process (CRP) that could register all those who needed to be registered and otherwise adequately clean the list. The government’s position is that while the CRP may be adequate for the normal process, it cannot properly deal with the phantom voters it believes are embedded in the list. Furthermore, the coalition began to make this claim in about October 2018, sometime before the December 2018 vote of no-confidence (NCV), and the PPP/C was at the time arguing that the government simply wanted to delay the elections beyond its constitutional period and remove PPP/C supporters from the list. Therefore, to now claim that the APNU+AFC is insisting on H2H to overcome the period set by the NVC is extremely questionable.
As noted, in December 2018, the government was brought down by a no confidence motion brought by the opposition when one of its MPs voted against it. This solidified its belief that the list was indeed padded: it saw the NCV as a desperate PPP/C’s attempt to remove it from office before the list could be properly cleansed. A lengthy legal battle that questioned the legality of the NCV ensued, reached the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) and ended with the government losing on every count. Running concurrent with the above process was a legal battle that questioned the president’s decision to unilaterally appoint the chairperson of the GECOM. This matter also reached the CCJ and the court held that the appointment was flawed.
In summary, the court ruled that the president and cabinet should immediately resign but the government assumes a caretaker status, i.e. unable to make any policy decisions; that the president and opposition leader should urgently meet and ‘hammer out a list of names not unacceptable to the President, the list comprising the six persons must then be formally submitted to the President by the Leader of the Opposition and the President then select the Chairman from among those names.’ On the question of elections, it directed that the leaders meet and ‘guided by constitutional imperatives’ set a date for the elections. There is much quarrel about what are these ‘constitutional imperatives’. Some believe that it means elections must be held as literally stated in the constitution, i.e. within 90 days of the CCJ’s decision, and others hold that it means creating conditions that will result in a fair and acceptable electoral outcome: i.e. a clean electoral list. So where do we go from here?
Firstly, to the government claim that the list is padded, make no mistake: multiple and underage voting still happens, particularly in the strongholds of the two large parties. As dusk fell one elections day, my colleagues and I were compelled to remove ourselves and not return to polling places in a PNCR stronghold because we began to suspect multiple voting. GECOM-type bodies are where the rubber hits the road in terms of modern elections rigging, and some false ballots were found in GECOM’s system during the 2015 election process. The PPP/C was in government for 23 years with a compliant Chief Election Officer who, upon exiting that office, after ‘mistakenly’ attempting to call the 2011 elections for the PPP/C, was immediately employed by the government! In `The issue is a list bloated by emigrants for whom locals seek to vote’ (SN: 17/03/2019), Vincent Alexander, a government associated member of the GECOM pointed to other infractions. Indeed, the mere fact of having one party in government for over two decades is sufficient for others to demand a completely new electoral list and, therefore, in my view, the demand by APNU is worthy of consideration. I also believe that both parties have phantom voters lodged in the list. It is only a matter of who has more and perhaps the coalition controlled GECOM intends to do precisely what the PPP/C fears: only extract PPP/C phantom voters.
Secondly, the president and opposition leader have met a few times but so far have been unable to hammer out a list of names to be formally put to the president. GECOM does not have a chairperson but its bureaucracy has proceeded with H2H based upon an order given by the commission whose chairperson was illegally appointed. This appears to me a flawed and possibly illegal decision that is likely to lead to another lengthy court battle. However, if the court does not stop H2H whether it demonstrates that the list is padded or not and regardless of the PPP/C boycott, its effect cannot be reversed!
Thirdly, the immediate task is for the president and the leader of the opposition to start doing what they are paid to do: politics. Compromise and hammer out a list of names not unacceptable to the president. In reality, it does not matter who suggests who and how many names are suggested; the idea is to find one person who is acceptable to both parties, and the opposition leader could then unilaterally chose all the other five and place them on a list and formally present that list to the president. Thereafter, the new commission could determine by way of a quick sample survey if the list is padded with phantom voters and simultaneously begin the continuous registration process. If the list is not padded, elections could be held immediately upon the completion of the CRP. But if it is flawed and H2H is required to fix it, the elections will be held immediately upon latter’s completion.
The CCJ made its decisions on the assumption that it was dealing with ‘reasonable and responsible’ men managing a reasonable and responsible context: although I know that neither of these assumptions is quite true, I based these recommendations similarly!
