Dear Editor,
I have noticed with increasing alarm, Dr. Henry Jeffrey’s attempt to accuse the PPP of rigging the elections (Stabroek News, Wednesday, 03 June 2020). Firstly, if Dr. Jeffrey was to say this in front of an educated readership he would be laughed out of the room. Who would believe that a party that has been out of power for 5 years and was unable to force the ruling party to have an elections in spite of the No Confidence Motion which was passed in December, 2018 would suddenly develop the apparatus to rig. Nobody seriously accused APNU+AFC of rigging in 2015.
Also, what were the APNU+AFC election agents doing when the ‘rigging’ was happening? If, they were they were so incompetent that they did not figure it out, then the entire party should shoulder the blame and concede defeat. Those that cannot train their own agents to pick up basic electoral fraud, then they are certainly incapable of running the country.
It should be pointed out that Dr. Jeffrey contradicts himself in his column when he posits that one should not speculate whether rigging took place but rather it should be verified factually. He says and I quote, “Whether or not this has taken place is not a matter for speculation, but can be and must be sufficiently verified factually”. But after saying that one should not speculate whether there was rigging, Dr. Jeffrey then went on to speculate that there may have been widespread rigging when he wrote, “If a factual investigation finds that not only 1 or 10 or even 100 migrants and/or dead person ‘voted’ in the elections, but hundreds and over 1,000 did and that this did not happen in one or two regions but in every region of the country, what are we to conclude”? Dr. Jeffrey then went on to base his entire column on this mere speculation that there was widespread rigging and attempted to make a comparison between Guyana and Suriname’s electoral system. But speculations cannot be assumed to be facts and Dr. Jeffrey knows this well.
If Dr. Jeffrey or anyone else strongly believes that there was electoral fraud regardless of its magnitude then they have every right to file an elections petition and let the court decide. But Dr. Jeffrey is wrong and perhaps disingenuous to suggest that GECOM should investigate these speculations before making a final declaration. Therefore, as adumbrated by former Attorney General, Mr. Anil Nandlall, GECOM conducted these elections and therefore, GECOM cannot now decide to investigate itself. GECOM is not a court or a tribunal and it does not possess the constitutional powers to function as one which would include summoning witnesses and examining evidence.
Dr. Jeffrey in his article tries to suggest that both parties are guilty of rigging, but he fools no one by his pathetic attempts.
Yours faithfully,
Shazad Sookram
