Dear Editor,
Despite the evident triumphalism by the PPP and its supporters, the only real news emerging from the recount exercise is that the 2020 elections were riddled with irregularities which in effect amounts to fraud. As I have long speculated, the votes in the boxes are severely compromised by a widespread and systematic manipulation of an electoral system that easily allowed for such interference. And the culprits are on both sides of the political divide. For the good of Guyana, that fact must be established and acknowledged by GECOM, the various stakeholders and the Guyanese people.
This letter is not to argue whether numbers should trump the system or whether systemic manipulation must meet a certain threshold in order to become fraud. I think we have passed that point. Suffice to say, any awarding of the election to either the APNU+AFC or the PPP would be tantamount to putting the official stamp on electoral fraud. That would by any measure be a travesty of formal democracy, but above all it would represent a travesty of natural and social justice. And both sides would be justified in feeling cheated.
Guyana is a stubborn country. Nevertheless, history persists in breaching the walls of that unreason by offering another path. One such path is for GECOM to use the results of the recount to spark a quest for a new order to Guyana—at least in the short-term. Should GECOM annul the election for want of credibility, it could open up a whole new chapter for our beleaguered country. More than two months ago I floated the idea of annulling the election and putting in place an interim government with the expressed task of overhauling the electoral and governance systems to bring them in line with the crying demands of the country. I was attacked by the “ethnic democrats” and their cohorts in “civil society” as a madman who wanted to deny the PPP its victory and to violate the votes of Guyanese.
Now two months later that very proposal has emerged as a credible alternative to the chaos that is likely to emerge from awarding the election to one of the parties and its camp. In our embrace of the carnival of domination we often do not see commonsense even when it spits in our faces. As it was on the morning of March 3, the fairest decision GECOM should arrive at is the annulling of the election which then opens the way for an interim power sharing government for a stipulated period of no more than two years with the task of doing what I suggested above.
The problem is that the PPP which has already declared itself the winner is unlikely to embrace such an outcome. We have to deal with that when we get to that point.
Yours faithfully,
David Hinds
Editor-in-Chief’s note: The only fraud that has been established is that of the District Four Returning Officer. The allegations of irregularities made by APNU+AFC and its agents during the recounting are preposterous and have no basis. Were they to be even countenanced it would mean that no election in this part of the world or anywhere else for that matter could be credibly held. GECOM has no power to annul elections it has overseen. That is for the court to do. GECOM must simply declare the result of the recount.
