“Curiouser and curiouser,” said Alice, as she watched her feet eventually appear so far off they were almost out of sight. Had Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll lived in the twenty-first century he might not have had to exercise his imagination at all, for here in our real world all the rules of logic are being defied every bit as much as they were in the one which his creativity conjured up. How, for example, would he have dealt with the dossier being distributed by the US lobbying firm JJ&B LLC, enlarged on by Mr Joseph Harmon on Thursday in his responses to the media? The only difference between Alice’s world and ours is that in the present context it is not feet which appear so far off they are almost out of sight; it is the truth.
Citizens are left to speculate which genius of make-believe in APNU+AFC supplied the lobbyists with the raw data on which they based their document. Or is it that a large number of members of that party should not be politicians at all having missed their true vocation as literary fantasists?
Central to the claims of the dossier is that the PPP/C is seeking US support to stage “a coup” against the Granger officials. If this would not exactly give members of the State Department apoplexy, they would at least be taken aback by the suggestion that they might lend any kind of credence to such a story. But the writer or writers feel unhampered by the realities of Washington’s world view. Breathlessly they go on to assert that the incumbent party won the election while the PPP/C has refused to concede defeat and has sued for a recount.
They aver too that accusations of fraud in relation to the District Four electoral results “have arisen solely from one political party producing Statement of Polls different from those held by the constitutional authority responsible for the elections.” But, they continue unabashedly, they have provided no evidence that Gecom’s SoPs are fraudulent.
It is all enough to make the head of a sane Guyanese spin in disbelief. But our putative storytellers do not stop there. The claim is also made on more than one occasion that the opposition stormed the Region Four office where the votes were being counted with a view to preventing the declaration of results. In addition, it is alleged that no less than Messrs Irfaan Ali and Bharrat Jagdeo encouraged a mob, some of whom were armed, to storm the building.
This is nothing if not an example of a Lewis Carroll upside-down world. Mr Clairmont Mingo’s failure to pursue public tabulation of Region Four’s votes using the SoPs, not to mention the production of a fraudulent spreadsheet is well known publicly, as is his refusal to abide by the requirements of a ruling handed down by the Chief Justice subsequent to that.
The problem for the incumbents is that all this happened in full view of numerous witnesses, including not just local observers and party representatives, but the overseas observers and some foreign diplomats as well. Surely those who decide policy in the ruling party are not trying to claim that these people have been hypnotised? Otherwise why would they deliberately misrepresent events to which they themselves were witness? The dossier’s answer is that, “Observers and diplomats have apparently bought into the PPP/C’s narrative without sufficient objective examination of the facts and in the absence of any evidence to support fraud.”
In other words, the lobbyists would indeed have to assume that these people are the victims of a mass delusion, including, presumably, the US Ambassador, otherwise how could they deny the evidence of their eyes, and instead buy into the PPP/C’s “narrative”? Any other explanation would be an example of a Lewis Carroll world of inverted reality.
But the fantasy writers have a further problem, and that is that the accounts of key heads of mission here as well as overseas observers in relation to the post-election fiasco, have resulted in warnings and threats of sanctions from major western countries should there be any illegal swearing-in of the president. Even the author of the dossier, it seems, baulks at openly taking on US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, so they go for Assistant Secretary of State Michael Kozak who made similar statements instead. It might be noted that this is still indirectly to impugn Mr Pompeo’s judgement.
In an extraordinary allegation it is claimed that the caution the Assistant Secretary issued had been deliberately orchestrated by the PPP and their consultants in the US. Who would have thought that the major opposition party had such enormous power in Washington? Clearly they will now be highly sought after by any number of countries for their help in converting the State Department to a desired view.
The dossier was less cautious about the British, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab being accused of “purportedly representing British Petroleum and Shell to access the new oil and gas finds”. Perhaps the Foreign Office might see the humour in this.
Not satisfied with turning the world upside down, the document’s authors also seem to believe they are living in an era long gone, when the Cold War held sway. They insist the PPP will restore the ascendancy of the Chinese and Russians in the Southern hemisphere, thereby undermining the influence of the United States. Since they accuse the western nations of being gullible or money-grabbing, and the autocratic ones of being power hungry in relation to the region, just who do they imagine their friends are in the international arena? But then, perhaps, where everything is make-believe it doesn’t really matter.
One of the stranger things about the document is that it states the company JJ&B LLC has been retained by the Government of Guyana, not APNU+AFC and that Mr Harmon in his capacity of Director General is the point of contact. Was the sum of US$40,000 which it was paid for April taxpayer funded? Mr Harmon denied it, saying the money had come from incensed friends and supporters of the coalition party abroad. Exactly how a political party could pay for a government activity was not explained, but in any case a statement from APNU+AFC on its Facebook page said that “as a government” it had “a duty to ensure the country is not portrayed as the PPP were trying to do.” As we reported too, Mr Harmon added that “as a government” the ruling party had the right to make sure developments were not derailed by a “narrative” contrary to the facts.
Yesterday, in a completely contradictory release, the Ministry of the Presidency maintained that the contents of the dossier were “spurious” and dismissed media reports on it as “erroneous.” This is all very curious, since this newspaper, and no doubt other media too, were simply reading what was on the face of the document and its contents, and reporting what Mr Harmon actually said about it. However, glaring contradictions do not unduly trouble the minds of those who operate in alternative realities. That said, what can be conceded is that the compilers committed a real-world blunder when they stated that President Granger was a US citizen, something which the latest release vehemently denied. In limited selective areas, it would seem, APNU+AFC does want to insist on the truth and not fiction.
When in his last press conference the Director General had said that the government wanted to change the “narrative” within the international community, it was not immediately apparent that he was using that word in its traditional sense, rather than in its modern more extended one. All is now clear, however, and with the revelation of the stories in this dossier endless possibilities are opened up for a children’s fantasy tale. Since we have no rabbits in Guyana, perhaps it could begin with how President Granger one day followed a labba down into its hole where everything became curioser and curioser.
