Dear Editor,
The newest submission from CEO Lowenfield went from grotesque to grim. It should bring delight to coalition supporters, except for one. As I have said early in what is now a full-fledged farce, count me out. I will not be a part of recognition or celebration of what is obviously filled with elements necessitating scorn and ridicule. I so scorn.
I say this because to disqualify and discard over 115,000 is beyond the shocking. It reeks of the sinister, as in arranging a continuing holding on to power for the coalition by any perverse manipulation. I have serious issues with such flagrant disregard for what citizens lined up for, toed the line for patiently, and placed their mark between the lines for on Monday March 2nd. I say this because what Mr. Lowenfield did was to condemn those voters to nonentities and dismiss them to the void of nonpersons. In a flash of fevered imagination, he has made dead people of 115,000 followers and voters.
I believed in a process, one that was largely fair. Yes, I appreciate that cheating has occurred, as alleged by both sides; it is embedded in Guyana’s electoral DNA. But not to the degree or materiality asserted during the actual balloting regime. Not when the agents of both majors were present (or should have been). Not when they were expected to be honest for their group’s interests (or should have been). Not when the Commonwealth, EU, and OAS all pronounced as credible the process in unanimity: passes smell tests, eye tests, and reasonableness tests. Surely, the singular mathematical brilliance of the CEO of GECOM does not surpass that of the combined wattage of veterans from international fields.
I am willing to award Mr. Lowenfield the Nobel Prize (Guyana’s prestigious, lucrative equivalent) for displaying a beautiful mind, a most beauteous one, indeed. Though I could have gone against (and I was weighing the merits) the persuasive reporting of the Commonwealth, EU, and OAS, especially the latter due to its troubling leadership, I could not go against one set of people. Meaning, the small group of observers from CARICOM. I thought and felt that they would do justice to any claim by the coalition that it was a victim of exploitation through wholesale cheating. I also trusted the three of them to do the right thing in the right way for the right reasons. They did and in the most convincing fashion for me. This is what matters to me: how I could look at their effort and report, its honesty and theirs, too; how I could work my way through it, as to its pros and cons, and whether I could stand for in belief, or against in disbelief; and, last, how I can think, not only of what that team of three shared, but how I can think for myself and of myself.
As I placed my trust in CARICOM, I did the same with the president. He failed me, and I failed myself. I can live with myself, but the president has to live before a nation. He, too, attested that he trusted CARICOM. And then he faded. For today, there is forced resorting to the CCJ. The question I ask myself continually these days is this: why did I allow myself to be anywhere near to such a culture, such citizens; indeed, such a country
But here I am, and I want to be clear: I am not of what the coalition thinks or wishes to guide others in thinking. When the party’s thoughts are towards what is clean and national, then I am all for that and it. I have no interest in any other thing or any other way. By the same token, I care not for what the opposition is thinking on things elections, since it and the coalition are of the same band of dirty brothers. I think it prepared well, did a number on the coalition, and now stands poised, in the absence of any meaningful evidence to the contrary, on the threshold of power. I wish it well, but I want no truck with it, or any damn one of the others. I regret where I am, but it is how I view most of them.
Before I leave, somethings else must be shared. In this backward country, anyone hoping and trusting, and standing for, this or that party is lauded by supporters of the side supported and despised by those not favoured. That is normal, understood, and expected, though it should not be to the degree exhibited here. What is offensive to me, and in the extreme, is that when I stand for the conviction that the elections is/are over, then this is the equivalent of crossing the floor. In other words, ‘eh, eh, like hee is now ah PPP maaan.’ With a national mentality and character like this, it why we are where we are, when nothing else matters. And of such ugliness and vapidity, the CEO of GECOM stands as a sculpted and statuesque marvel to Guyanese shamelessness and disgracefulness.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
