Dear Editor,
As Guyanese prepared for the May 11, 2015 election, Murtland ‘Slugger’ Williams, longstanding member of The United Force, recalled “The PNC’s repeated rigging of elections in the 1960s”, cautioning “Old habits die hard” and urged care in how they exercise their franchise in the upcoming election (TUF member recalls horrors of elections rigging under PNC, The Chronicle, March 20, 2015). The current imbroglio with the recent election results is cause to reflect on Mr Williams’ caution.
It is now well documented and generally known that every general election during the PNC’s twenty-eight years in government, from 1964 to 1992, was massively rigged to keep the PNC in power. For each of those elections, the Chairperson of the Elections Commission was a former member of the judiciary. Now, the first general election under the rebranded PNC (APNU) government after the party’s twenty-three years in opposition, is tainted with accusations of attempted fraud. After two months a winner is still to be declared officially because of the shenanigans of the Secretariat’s staff and the inaction of the Chairperson. Interestingly, the Chairperson of GECOM is once again a former judge.
Sir Donald Jackson, a former Chief Justice, was the Chairperson for the 1968 and 1973 elections. Overseas voting was one of the key means of rigging in 1968. In 1973, in addition to overseas voting, the army was used to seize ballot boxes from polling stations and transfer to a central counting location where rigging occurred. On this occasion two PPP supporters who attempted to prevent the seizure at a polling station in the Corentyne were shot and killed by the soldiers.
After Britain’s Granada TV exposed to the world the fictitious voters and the extent of the frauds in 1968 and 1973 and with Prime Minister Forbes Burnham playing a more active role on the world stage, overseas voting was discontinued.
For the 1980 election another former Chief Justice, Sir Harold Bollers, was the Chairperson of GECOM and for the first time international observers were encouraged by then President Burnham to come into the country to observe and thereby lend credibility to the result. However, as massive fraud was being observed and documented at polling stations, UK’s Lord Avebury, Head of the observer team was arrested by the police and his camera and notes confiscated. Upon his return to the UK, he issued a scathing report detailing the fraud. He was then banned from entry into the country for the following election.
In 1985, under President Mr Desmond Hoyte, successor to Mr Burnham, Sir Harold Bollers was again the Chairperson of GECOM. Foreign observers were not allowed and once more the pattern of 1973 and 1980 was followed, except more extreme. Opposition supporters were openly intimidated and in some cases their scrutineers had to be removed from polling stations for their safety. A December 10, 1985 New York Times article captioned, OPPOSITION LEADER ROUGHED UP AS GUYANA VOTES, reported “Mr. Jenkins (a UK Guardian reporter representing a number of UK papers) said that he had been punched and kicked and that his tape recorder and about $200 had been taken. Then, he said, he and Mr. Jagan were forced into their cars at gunpoint by two men in civilian clothes and ordered to drive to a nearby police station, where they were detained for about an hour and a half.” In the article, Dr Cheddi Jagan is quoted as saying “I was nearly killed today, and so was a British journalist with me”.
In relation to the recent election, it was President Granger who invited foreign observers to come and witness the process. However, when these eminent individuals witnessed and called out the fiddling of the result for Region 4, the Foreign Minister came, lectured them, and threatened to revoke their credentials, an act that was portrayed later by Mr Granger’s underlings as a misunderstanding. And to compound this disgrace, foreign diplomats from friendly countries who sided with the observers were accused by his party of “interference” in Guyana’s internal affairs.
Had it not been for the presence of the diplomats from the US, UK, Canada, and the EU, as well as observers from the OAS, the Commonwealth, and the EU, and the furore created by the opposition during Mingo’s caper, APNU+AFC would have been declared the winner of this most recent election and Mr Granger sworn in as President based on results that were deemed by the observers, foreign diplomats and others as “not credible”. Indeed! Murtland Williams was so right when he cautioned “old habits die hard”
Yours faithfully,
Harry Hergash
