Creating storms in teacups seems to have become a speciality of APNU+AFC in recent times. There was Mr Joseph Harmon, the chief guardian of the party’s received policy positions telling yet another foreign leader last week to refrain from expressing his views on Guyana’s election process. This time it was Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent and the Grenadines who was the target of his remarks after that leader said on Wednesday that Caricom was expecting the winner of Guyana’s elections to be declared in accordance with the results of the National Recount.
Leaving aside the fact that Mr Gonsalves is not a man known to feel inhibited about expressing his views on any subject, most of the weary Guyanese electorate almost certainly did not think there was anything inappropriate about what he said. Not so Mr Harmon. “[The coalition] is concerned that … Gonsalves has chosen to pronounce on a process that is still ongoing, and proposes to direct a constitutional body (Gecom) in another Caricom Member State, in the execution of its duties,” he said portentously in a statement. Furthermore he conveyed surprise that the St Vincent Prime Minister would take a public position that is “prejudicial to the integrity of the process and its eventual outcome.”
Not to be outdone the PNCR called on Chair of Caricom Mia Mottley to issue a statement distancing the regional organisation from what Mr Gonsalves had said. The party was no doubt particularly antipathetic to remarks relating to his expectation that “the recount would be honoured”, and that Caricom would not “stand by idly and watch the results be set aside.”
As if Mr Harmon’s political gaucherie were not enough for Guyanese to swallow at a time like this, yesterday his leader came galloping to his subordinate’s defence. Some of what President Granger had to say in an interview on Benschop radio we have all heard before – and more than once – but this time he added that comments by regional leaders on this country’s election process were both “reckless” and “premature”. Exactly how he came to this conclusion more especially considering that the entire nation now knows the result of the recount, and by extension, therefore, who won the election, only he can say.
Tiresomely he repeated that the process involves counting the ballots, reporting by the Chief Election Officer as well as by the Caricom observers, a review by Gecom and the declaration of the final results by the commission. “So right now,” he told his listeners, “we’ve only completed one stage, we haven’t completed all four stages and that is why it is imprudent for people to rush ahead and claim loss or victory. There is no such justification for such claims at this point in time.” Mr Harmon too had followed this identical line, but as we had reported earlier, what Mr Keith Lowenfield submits as well as the Caricom report will not be considered for the declaration of results as prescribed under Section 96 of the Representation of the People Act. In addition, the Recount Order gives Gecom the discretion to decide whether or not it wants the CEO to submit a final report.
Enveloped in his fantasy bubble Mr Granger along with his party has been promoting the fiction that the election was not free and fair, and that numerous irregularities vitiated the outcome. APNU+AFC have sought to insist that the commission “cannot use illegal and fraudulent votes to produce a valid and acceptable result,” and have indicated they want it to investigate these irregularities. Suffice it to say that Gecom has no power or means to investigate any such violations, and in any case that is not its function.
Most of the coalition’s claims, such as those pertaining to the Disciplined Services votes, have been demonstrated to be outright nonsense, and where the others are concerned the party still has not adduced any evidence in support of them. If it insists on pursuing this line, then its only option, as so many have already observed, including, it might be added, Mr Gonsalves, is an elections petition.
But continuing with his bubble-speak, President Granger decided to rewrite history, claiming the anomalies in the poll were the reason for the recount. While he personally might be operating in a world of his own creation, no one else has forgotten the real chronology of events. It is very public knowledge that the impasse over the Region Four tabulation is what eventually produced an agreement between himself and Mr Jagdeo for a recount, the fulfilment of which was interrupted by a court action brought by one of his own party candidates, no less.
But at least one leading Caricom figure was not about to allow Mr Harmon’s attack on Prime Minister Gonsalves to go unremarked. In the course of two separate interviews on local radio yesterday, former Prime Minister of Barbados and head of the Commonwealth Observer mission here, Owen Arthur, expressed the view that the APNU+AFC campaign manager cannot be allowed to attack leaders, more particularly since he is not a leader himself. “In this matter, Joe Harmon is a mere utensil and he is out of order to be speaking to Caribbean leaders in the way in which he is,” he said. He went on to advise, inter alia, “Your leader should not be allowing Joe Harmon to be attacking other leaders in the Caribbean in this vitriolic way.”
The Guyanese head of government here was seemingly unmoved, describing Mr Harmon’s comments as “quite correct.” One can only remark that Mr Granger, who everyone once thought was fully au fait with diplomatic protocols, appears now to be afflicted by a bout of amnesia.
The main point which Mr Arthur made, however, related to the propriety of Mr Gonsalves’s comments. He adverted to the Charter for Civil Society signed by the Caribbean countries including Guyana, which required them to hold free and fair elections. “It would, therefore, be entirely contrary to the provisions of the Charter for Civil Society for Caricom countries to stand by if an election is being stolen,” he told the Newsroom; “Gonsalves was only speaking within the context of the spirit and the letter of the Charter of Civil Society when he made the statement that he made.”
As well as forgetting the protocols, it might seem that President Granger may also have forgotten the Charter of Civil Society.
As it was Mr Arthur simply echoed Mr Gonsalves’s remarks cited above, which imply that Guyana’s eviction from Caricom could be a possibility if the results were “set aside.” The former Barbados Prime Minister, however, was more explicit: “Leaders of Caricom as a class would rather free and fair elections [and] if the government does not want to accept the results and still wants to stay in office then Caricom will have to decide whether to suspend Guyana,” he told Kaieteur Radio. Guyana could not afford to portray itself as a “rogue state.”
Messrs Gonsalves and Arthur are just the latest in a long line of overseas spokespersons who have reiterated time and again in one form or another that there have to be credible results. In the case of some of the leading western democracies the current de facto government has been warned that should a president be sworn in on the basis of flawed results, then sanctions would follow. And APNU+AFC has so far failed to ‘change the narrative’ in the United States in particular, despite the hiring of an expensive lobbying firm.
By now it should be dawning on President Granger that railing at every representative of a foreign government who speaks out about our bizarre post-election process will not change the reality. He should forget the bubble-speak and tell his supporters the truth, namely, that the winner, as Mr Gonsalves said, will have to be declared “in accordance with the recount.”
