Dear Editor,
I was chatting with my friend Dubya the other night when, with a heavy sigh, he remarked that GECOM will have to annul the elections result and order new elections. I responded by saying that not everyone would agree with that assessment. He replied with the following analogy:
If two guys are at a table gambling for $10,000 and after disputing the winning hand a look at the cards is demanded, whereupon it is discovered that something was wrong with the winning hand, the game has got to be replayed as a man is not going to hand over his 10 grand just so. I then suggested that the situation might play out differently if there were others standing behind the players observing the game and they thought that the win was ok. Dubya did not agree with this and pointed out that the observers are not playing in the game and their opinions cannot count. I thereupon made the point that not anyone and everyone is allowed in a casino or gambling den – for those admitted would be either members or invited persons – and the observers of the Guyana elections were all invited to observe our elections.
Dubya’s analogy is quite spot-on however, for it illustrates very clearly that whoever loses the elections will feel, perhaps rightly, very aggrieved. One Party would reason, if it lost the vote, that it won the count whilst the other would reason, if the vote went against it, that it should not have lost when many instances of clear fraud favoured the count for its opponent. I think, however, that there are many reasons why, in the case of Guyana, we ought not to be compelled to view the recount in terms of a clash of opponents out of which will emerge a winner and an inevitable loser.
Our motto is “One People One Nation One Destiny”. It is an aspirational motto that was first proclaimed to the world in May 1966. Aspirational it was then and still is now, because in 1966 it was acknowledged that Guyana was a country of six races – which is still correct if the Mixed Race Guyanese is substituted for the European. In reality though, it would be nitpicking not to agree that all six races do live together for all practical purposes as One People except in the months running up to every General Elections, when the two majority races representing roughly 32% and 42% of the population respectively enter into competition for power.
As such we do not have a racism problem. The Afro-Guyanese does not consider himself genetically superior to the Indo-Guyanese, and overlooking the underlying caste-influenced outlook brought to the then colony by the indentured Indians who came to replace the formerly enslaved Africans who had severed their forced relationship with the land, there is no evidence that the Indo-Guyanese considers himself genetically superior to his Afro-Guyanese counterpart. It is worth noting that those who sought a better life in the then colony of British Guiana would have almost exclusively been representatives of India’s lower castes. Guyana thus has racial (as against racist) perspectives that operate healthily for 4½ years then dangerously for 6 electioneering months and healthily again for the 4½ years to follow.
The real reason for this silly, and oftentimes deadly, cycle is competition for the power to control limited resources based on the premise that only a leadership of one’s own race would give one a fair share of the available pie. It is true that some significant patronage is extended to persons of the same race as the leadership – of either major Party when in power – but that patronage has never reached significantly beyond the friends, extended families and high-up Party affiliates of the leadership. There are literally tens of thousands of impoverished Indo and Afro-Guyanese persons throughout the land who have never ever tasted or seen their forebears directly taste the benefits of having in power a leadership of their own race.
Today Guyana is at a critical junction of history. We absolutely need to be One People of One Nation ‘now-now-now’ as many Guyanese would say informally in conversation. We need to be One People as we present as a country before the International Court of Justice in a few weeks’ time asserting the right to own all 83,000 square miles of Guyana territory – that is if we seriously want to remain as One Nation. We ought to get firmly into the mindset of truly embracing One Destiny. As an oil-producing nation, there is now absolutely no reason why 780,000 persons living in such a large, fertile and resource-rich geographical area should be squabbling over control of resources. Since December our country has earned over USD110M from oil alone – and that is despite our second oil lifting being impacted by a dramatic dip in oil prices. Guyana will be one of only a handful of countries that will record a positive rate of growth in 2020. Guyanese now have every reason and incentive to stay together as One People without the predictable 4½ hiatuses.
I will not disclose my opinion as to what our GECOM Chair, a widely experienced retired Justice of Appeal, ought to decide. The decision will be her own solely, as the Commission’s setup is such that there will inevitably be a deadlock between the 6 Commissioners who equally represent the 2 main political parties. Going forward though, we do need to reform both our electoral system and Constitution without delay, so that Indian and African Guyanese will no longer feel any compelling desperation to see a Party representative of their own race in the office of President of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana.
Yours faithfully,
Ronald Bostwick
