Some five years ago, the then Executive President of Guyana, Donald Ramotar famously declared at a press conference, “We are convinced that these elections were rigged,” following early general and regional polls.
Criticising the May 11, 2015 voting process and results that put his main competitor just ahead, he claimed his People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) was cheated of victory, due to outright collusion between the Guyana Elections Commission’s (GECOM) and the Opposition groups led by A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) coalition dominated by long-time rival, the People’s National Congress (PNC).
On Election Day, Mr Ramotar had sagely stated, “Whoever loses should peacefully accept.” Three tense days after it became apparent that the nation had voted to change the Minority Government following the party’s exhaustive and exhausting 23-year vice-grip on power, the sweating President told reporters gathered at his party’s Freedom House headquarters the uncomfortable truth, “I cannot concede that I lost this election.”
This week Guyanese may once again be remembering those shocking words if unspoken, for this time Mr Ramotar’s successor, the incumbent President David Granger has retreated as usual behind another deafening and disturbing wall of silence so far unable to admit the clear and present evidence of his party’s defeat, and failing one again to reassure a nervous populace who has been put through 100 days of electoral impasse hell.
Yet the country breathed a collective of relief and quietly celebrated the successful but arduous completion of recounting nearly half a million votes cast in the 2020 elections, supported by the daily toil of many dedicated and determined young people including from the new, smaller parties aghast about the absence of a definite result months after the critical polls. They took a combined total of just over 9,000 votes with the newcomer politician, the indigenous leader, Lenox Shuman’s Justice and Liberty Party (JLP) winning a seat outright that will be shared with two other groups.
The recount of ballots cast on March 2 concluded this week with the certification of Region Four, the largest and most prized electoral district, which made all the difference in the 2015 polls and again this time round. Overall, the exercise proved that the PPP/C captured about 233,000 votes as against the APNU’s 217,000, confirming the shocking extent of the earlier fiddling by the Region Four Returning Officer (RO), Clairmont Mingo who inflated numbers for the coalition and deflated figures for the PPP/C during the botched tabulation process. Twice in March, Mr Mingo used a doctored spreadsheet and unverified results to announce the coalition as the winner. Acting Chief Justice Roxane George-Wiltshire is set to rule today on contempt proceedings which had been filed in March against Mr Mingo.
As the APNU/AFC stubbornly sticks to its refusal to release their original Statements of Polls (SOPs), and Guyana anxiously waits for the next steps towards GECOM formally announcing the winner, the party continues to furiously peddle nasty allegations of widespread fraud, even though it has apparently forgotten signing off on the original documents for all the Regions without any major issues, in an heavily-scrutinised elections endorsed as credible and free and fair by major observers.
The staggering sense of déjà vu is overwhelming. The 2015 elections were called due to a stand-off between President Ramotar and the National Assembly, after he had defied spending cuts imposed by the body, resulting in the legislature calling for a motion of no confidence.
Mr Ramotar wanted a recount of every single vote arguing that the Chief Election Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield had identified problems with nearly 500 polling results. Despite GECOM’s admission that a total recount would make little difference to the final outcome, the President like his successor chose to ignore the authoritative conclusions of international observer teams ranging from the Carter Center, the Commonwealth, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and the Organisation of American States (OAS), to the envoys of the United States of America (USA), Canada and Great Britain, that the elections were free, fair and credible.
“We are not bad losers, nor are we delaying the elections (results). We are winners, but were cheated out of victory,” PPP/C official Ganga Persaud insisted at the briefing, alleging that the elections were rife with irregularities. Mr Ramotar was eventually forced to acknowledge defeat days on, when hard reality hit home as several top diplomats snubbed his summons to a related meeting on the PPP/C’s concerns over the results.
The GECOM Chairman at that time, Dr. Steve Surujbally formally announced the APNU+AFC candidate David Granger as the President-elect, stressing that the Commission had made a genuine effort “to do right and not to (just) look right.”
As the Election Agent for the PPP/C, Mr Persaud later filed a legal petition demanding a complete recount and fresh polls, alleging that the entire electoral process was flawed citing procedural errors and fake SOPs, but up to now, incredibly, the matter is still pending before the High Court even as Guyana grapples with the prolonged political crisis in the midst of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. Now, we may yet see another petition, but from the APNU along the same lines.
With warnings sounding loudly, including up to yesterday from the United States Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who reiterated calls for “a quick and credible conclusion to the vote recount,” Mr Granger, once lauded as a patriot of integrity and honour, will hopefully respect the clear majority given that the game is up and choose “to do right,” in preparing to leave office and take up the mantle of Opposition leader in a new Parliament that will be once more closely divided at 33-31-1.
ID recalls the words of the British development economist Sir Paul Collier, who visited Guyana in 2018 during Mr Granger’s administration, that “Elections determine who is in power, but they do not determine how power is used.”
