Dear Editor,
I refer to a letter by Mr. Tacuma Ogunseye, published in your letter columns yesterday (June, 21st 2020), entitled `Can Mr Gaskin explain what constitutes a seriously rigged election’?
Having shared a few platforms with Mr. Ogunseye during the recent elections campaign, I wish to respond as respectfully as possible to several of the points made in his letter.
In framing his comments, he begins with the claim that I have publicly shared my opinion that “Mingo’s declarations were acts of fraud done on behalf of the coalition”, adding that “in doing so, he is claimed to be a witness to the event”. If I could dwell on this for a moment, I’d like to make it clear that nowhere in any of my three Facebook posts have I suggested that Mr. Mingo’s fraudulent declarations were done on behalf of the Coalition. The Coalition may have been the beneficiary of what Mingo was attempting to do, and he may have been put up to it by some rogue element(s) within the Coalition. However, as a member of National Executive of the AFC and, at the time, privy to discussions taking place at the highest levels of the party, I can categorically state that there was no awareness within the AFC of anyone acting to falsify the results of the elections. I also believe this to be true, for the most part, of APNU. It was this belief that led me to include the following statement in my Facebook post of March 20th, 2020: Unless we can bring ourselves to understand that there are good people on both sides of the 2020 elections controversy who genuinely believe the narrative coming out of their camps, we risk detonating the fuse that has been burning slowly for over six decades. Things have developed since then and so has the narrative coming out of the APNU+AFC camp. My most recent post on Facebook (June 19th) captures my views on the matter.
Mr. Ogunseye then questions my interpretation of a “seriously rigged election”. For me a seriously rigged election is one which provides an outcome that does not reflect the will of the electorate. In our case, an outcome where the most votes are awarded to a party for which the most votes were not cast. In other words: the outcome which Mingo was attempting to produce.
However, the context in which Mr. Ogunseye was seeking my interpretation of what constitutes a “seriously rigged election” has to do with the following extract from my most recent Facebook post which he quoted: The claims of fraud were grossly exaggerated and, unfortunately, designed to fool party supporters, who had placed their faith in the Coalition, into believing that there was actual evidence of serious election rigging by the PPP-C. This statement pertains to the recount period, and I stand by its two main assertions: 1) that the claims of fraud were grossly exaggerated; and 2) that these claims were designed to fool supporters into believing that there was actual evidence of serious election rigging by the PPP-C. To me the claims were inferential in nature relying on bold headlines, repetition and the use of words such as ‘massive’, ‘gargantuan’, ‘widespread’ and ‘intense’ to scale up their impact. To me the target audience of these statements could only have been APNU+AFC supporters, since other persons refused to even entertain them. The evidence provided was either weak, or insufficient to establish that there was fraud to an extent that could affect the outcome of the entire election in any region. There was little real evidence of PPP-C involvement in any of the irregularities uncovered during the recount. In other words, all we have are a number of irregularities, many of which can be attributed to human error – unlike the Mingo declarations – and which do not show a result that is grossly inconsistent with normal voting patterns in Guyana. Nevertheless, I have never suggested that these irregularities be dismissed. In fact, whenever the final declaration is made and the next government sworn in, I would urge that they be properly investigated and explained to the public as a priority. Any wrongdoing should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Mr. Ogunseye is also requesting from me a “position on the 41 ballot boxes on the East Coast in strongholds of the PPP-C that only had ballots without supporting documents”. I readily admit that this one had, and still has, me stumped. I have read varying reports on this matter, and I believe it warrants an explanation or an investigation. However, this is first and foremost a GECOM problem and, given that it is the stronghold of one of the major parties, I am of the view that invalidating the votes in those polling stations would provide a final result that is much less reflective of the will of the people than accepting them with the inclusion of possible phantom votes. In other words, while I believe the matter should be investigated, I do not believe it should detain us at this point from a final declaration. This is just my layman’s view.
In summing up his response to my post, Mr. Ogunseye ends his letter with “… he is playing to the `gallery’ and as a politician, is entitled to do so.” I can assure him that, for me, there is no gallery. I was not a candidate in these elections, and I have no political ambitions. I am simply not prepared to blindly support any political party. My loyalty is to my country.
Yours faithfully,
Dominic Gaskin
