“The Voters’ Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Plotters’ Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel the Result
Nor all thy fraud and stall wash out a word of it.”
-With apologies to Edward Fitzgerald’s Omar Khayyám
The election of March 2nd was conclusively won by the PPP. The statements of poll – ballots counted at the place of voting and signed by all the parties – when added together from all polling stations across the land gave a clear victory to the PPP.
An outlandishly crude attempt to falsify the tabulation and declaration of votes and thereby rig the election was thwarted.
The true state of the election is known by all the small parties in the election and by Caricom, the OAS, the Commonwealth, the European Union, the Carter Center, the U.S. Ambassador, the British High Commissioner, the Canadian High Commissioner, Transparency International and the Human Rights Association.
David Granger, the Presidential candidate who lost, and his placemen and place -women should no longer be in de facto office. If one were thinking how best Guyana might be administered with a clean slate before us, it might well be that some form of shared governance – some version of “winner does not take all” – would be suggested and even have a good chance of being adopted in what would be a new Constitution.
But we are not considering governance with a clean state before us. The slate has already been written on and the writing states that whichever party wins the election will govern. Should that party in Government then wish to re-examine the slate and even wipe it clean and try again that is certainly a matter to be seriously considered.
But, of course, those who won the election must first take office as the current slate states must happen.
One writes “of course” because if this does not happen then the writing on the slate would have meant nothing, and so the writing on any future slate would also mean nothing: Democracy would have been made a mockery of, the precious right of voting would have counted for nothing, trust in agreements would no longer have any meaning and, ultimately, the right to govern would depend on fraud and force.
The slate on which it is written how Guyana is to be governed must always be headlined Democracy and not Dictatorship.