Dear Editor,
This correspondence is so motivated by my innate-grandmother-inspired-values of honesty, truth, fairplay and latterly, the maintenance of democratic principles, that I fear I’ll be guilty of some rambling and a less-than-coherent presentation hereunder. However all the sentiments are relevant to my quiet outrage. (Even as one who still recognises a visionary Forbes Burnham, beginning in earnest in 1973, before he succumbed to absolute power.)
Firstly, a sharp quick blast on my own trumpet of self-praise. In my Friday columns in this newspaper, over the past months, I repeatedly highlighted two strong politically-related views: (1) That the Returning Officers selected by the Elections Body (GECOM) would be pivotal to the culmination of the elections process on and after Polling Day; (2) that Brigadier Granger, his PNC and tribal surrogates would arrange victory “by any means necessary.” Unfortunately, how – accurate A.A. Fenty has proven to be! Witness the Region 4 strategically hatched plot!
I understand that one’s “conscience”, whether inherited, inculcated or evolved, is really the recognition, “consciousness”, the acceptance of the moral right (ness) or wrong which informs one’s motives, positions, behaviours. Of course, today’s young seem to pay little attention to such attributes. Some have not even “developed” a conscience and some older folks “stifle” theirs
My conscience prevents me from accepting what the GECOM surrogates of the PNC did last Thursday to produce the Region Four “victory” for His Excellency’s “partnership” and “coalition”. My still retained conscience-generated values override my long-held wish to see Guyana’s Afro-descended “Black” people truly, fairly empowered. What conscience I have left is quietly outraged by this blatant crude embarrassment against electoral democracy.
I voted Granger-Nagamootoo in 2015, not because I “liked” them, but to reject Jagdeo/Ramotar. After 5:30 pm on the March 02 Polling Day one week ago when Kirk insisted he would “transport” me to my polling place, reluctantly I voted for a “small” Party. Note friends, I voted only because I’m not confident that I’ll be around to vote next time whenever. But would I ever, ever “vote PNC or PPP” again, like traditional party tribalists? Even as I grimace at non-credible comparisons with past “precedent” like 1997 spreadsheets or the Janet swearing-in.
One Party’s loyalists list their leader’s “decency, honesty, integrity.” I suppose all that’s relative against whom some comparison is being made. But when I behold how true integrity- even the version claimed by some upright law-abiding, religious matured citizens – who will pay homage to the leader spawned by militaristic “command-centre” mentality, I know for sure that genuine integrity has now been compromised into a new tribal brand. Of course when the poor benefits from the Development Decade, they care not about integrity and fair elections.
For myself onwards, and a few thousands of like–minded, neutral citizens, as well as the reps of the international community, I condemn the Thursday 5th March “Operation Hijack-Power. A joint GECOM-PNC enterprise. I suppose I’ll have to endure that power-grab and its sustained presense here but I don’t ever have to embrace it.
I conclude by mixing sarcastic humour with a powerfully-relevant quote from Facebook sources: I congratulate the most recent group of “National awardees”, as well as those to be honoured next time. The Joseph Stalin quote is: It’s not who votes that matters, it’s who counts the votes.” So how did the late Dictator Stalin meet a recuperated Returning Officer Mingo of Region 4, Guyana?
Still loving my native land including my “friends” now lost.
Yours faithfully,
Allan Arthur Fenty