Dear Editor,
In his weekly columns over the past year in particular, Henry Jeffrey has laid out the pitfalls and challenges inherent in Guyana’s mainly bi-communal society, starkly visible at the time of national elections. Dr Jeffrey summarised the many ways in which elections have been, and continue to be rigged, all over the world (SN: 31/07/2019). Why would Guyana be different when the prize is unfettered presidential power in a country now flush with oil millions? Ludicrously, the tiny population of Guyana has an inflated voters’ list. There have been several suggestions that both major political parties intended and/or succeeded in using those inflated numbers to their advantage; not difficult when party scrutineers can be bought, and ballot boxes stuffed legally.
Some riggers, or perhaps influencers, are sophisticated, and use a combination of social media tools and a time-tested ground game, to gain advantage. Other riggers are simply inept, and have no ground game. Neither major party has wanted to change the 1980 Constitution when in power; content to only tinker around the edges. So here we are once again, teetering on the precipice of race war.
This country, which the two sets of transplanted populations are fighting over, is Indigenous territory, never formally ceded to the Dutch or British. In 1895, the USA was prepared to go to war with the United Kingdom, in support of Venezuelan claims to all territory west of the Essequibo River. Unfortunately for the Venezuelan side, the published documents compiled by George Lincoln Burr, representative of Venezuelan interests at the 1896 Boundary Commission, did not include any statements of support from the Indigenous chiefs whose claimed customary lands extended over the Essequibo region. The Karinya (Carib) hated the Spaniards in Venezuela who had launched successive attacks on their strongholds up until 1775 when the Spaniards finally succeeded in dislodging the Karinya from the Orinoco and lower Caura Rivers.
Before and after 1775, all the Indigenous Peoples – Cariban, Arawakan and Warao – lived with the ever-present danger of being rounded up and forced to provide labour for the missions run by Roman Catholic orders in the Orinoco and other regions of what is now Venezuela. Small wonder that the Indigenous witnesses recorded in the Boundary Commission’s reports declared the British as the lesser of two evils, accepted British assertions of sovereignty and rejected the territorial claims of the Bolivarian Republic. None gave up their Indigenous sovereignty for this territory over which the African and East Indian Guyanese are now locked in strife.
In the present moment, whatever the flaws of the 2020 elections, there is no credible organisation or individual, in or outside of Guyana, which accepts the grotesquery that has played out since 2 March 2020.
If I understand the relevant laws correctly, one option would be for GECOM to replace the questionable Returning Officer(s) and conduct a full recount of the original ballot papers. If there are continued doubts about the integrity of those ballot papers, notwithstanding the seals on the boxes and the triple locks on the shipping containers in which those boxes were stored, then GECOM-accredited representatives of all competing parties could compare simultaneously their copies of the Statements of Poll, in the presence of observers such as the senior CARICOM team invited by President Granger in agreement with former President Jagdeo.
There is no Nelson Mandela on our horizon. In the meantime, I add my voice to the crescendo of voices that call for an end to the current impasse, and an end to APNU+AFC shenanigans. I would hope that the ‘victorious’ party would initiate a serious start to a longer-term solution involving shared governance and an updated voters’ list, together with reforms and harmonisation of the electoral laws and the national Constitution.
Yours faithfully,
Janette Bulkan