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.