Dear Editor,
I respond to Stabroek News’ editorial, dated April 27,2020 `There will be riggers at the recount’. This is a malicious, mischievous, and reckless editorial. At least in substance it is aiding and abetting an environment for lawlessness. It seems too to be part of the new, contrived PPP/C narrative which is setting the stage for rejection of the recount results, if not in their favour. In high stakes elections there will always be the potential for misfeasance and malfeasance. What matters is the system and the checks and balances. If this editorial was informed with good faith it would have focused on the proposed mechanisms and sought to expose possible vulnerabilities. But that’s not the intent. The intent is to make the public space more fertile for doubts and distrust. It’s another brick in the process of undermining public institutions and the people who lead them.
At core it is calculative mischief and contempt. It is a manifest of the culture of subversive politics. It follows therefore, that closer attention must be paid to the message and language trends or patterns of Stabroek News. What and whose interest it is advancing and why? Why would Stabroek News be complicit in perpetuating doubts in the society, aiding and abetting contempt and distrust based on assumptions and prejudice rather than facts? That kind of editorial is what one would expect from a partisan paper, whose agenda would be to create doubts and conditions for rejecting an outcome, irrespective of how valid it is. It is noticeable that although clear and credible measures for security, accountability, and transparency, are being put in place the PPP/C and its cohorts are deliberately fomenting distrust. Why? It is basic that if the PPP/C’s electoral claims are legitimate, a forensic audit under the watchful eyes of the stakeholders would prove that. If the audit doesn’t prove that what would be the new narrative, counted but cheated? Is the narrative of distrust aimed at supporting such a claim in case the audit disproves the aggressive accusations?
Yours faithfully,
Lin-Jay Harry-Voglezon
Editor-in-Chief’s note: One would have to be conveniently blind or living in another dimension not to be aware that there is an ongoing attempt to rig Guyana’s general elections and a number of the compromised personnel from GECOM who have participated in this treachery will be present at the recount. Far from abetting an environment of lawlessness, the editorial sought to limit the opportunities for such.
