Perhaps the most perplexing thing about the aftermath of the March 2nd election is that the caretaker President has managed to create an alternative story about the process which defies incontrovertible evidence and the testimony of innumerable witnesses, yet is still believed by a significant number of people. That only applies within the country of course; outside it he can find no haven of support for his aberrant version of events.
Perhaps he calculated that despite the likelihood that the leading western nations along with the EU would not accept his vision, he could still survive their censure, although whether he also considered they were serious about sanctions, only he would know. In any event, he should not be in any doubt now, given that the US has withdrawn visas for those it regards as being complicit in undermining democracy here, and the UK has announced it is working on the sanctions which would come into play in the event of an illegal swearing-in. While he still behaves as if he is determined to become the next president, the world meanwhile is closing in on him, and only someone who is living in a mental universe of unreality would believe that he could successfully take on that world.
The de facto head of state now confronts what US Ambassador Sarah-Ann Lynch has said is the concern of over 130 nations “about the repeated efforts to undermine the will of the people.” But if he has been oddly cavalier about the expressed concerns of countries like the US, UK, Canada and the EU, there is one nation in particular which will have given him a jolt because he would not have expected a call to accept the result of the recount from that quarter. That nation is Brazil.
On Wednesday a statement was posted on the website of Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs calling for respecting the popular will as expressed in the March 2nd election, in correspondence with the Caricom supervised recount and the recent ruling of the CCJ. It went on to say: “Four months after the election, the Brazilian government considers that delaying the conclusion of the electoral process poses a serious threat to stability in Guyana and a departure from the democratic commitments that the country must observe in the regional and hemispheric context.”
Caretaker President Granger has always been close to Brazil, and as we reported on Thursday, he said last December that Guyana and Brazil shared “a common vision of the continent of South America as a zone of peace.” This country, of course, has received considerable assistance from its neighbour over the years in both the civilian and military technical departments, but most important, it has always been seen as an ally in the border controversy with Venezuela.
However, it is something else which has probably given Mr Granger pause for thought, and that is that like him, President Jair Bolsonaro is a former military man, who has placed military and ex-military personnel in important government posts. Furthermore, the Brazilian head of state is an unapologetic admirer of his country’s military dictatorship, hardly marking him out, State House might have thought, as a dedicated democrat. Be that as it may, when the situation in Guyana comes up for discussion at the Permanent Council of the OAS on Tuesday, those who are currently running this country will find they have no allies around the table, not excluding heavyweight Brazil, whose views will be taken seriously by other Latin nations.
But even supposing that in the face of international condemnation the caretaker President were in the not too distant future to accept the inevitable, there would still be the problem of all those within the country whom he has persuaded that the PPP/C stole the election. The mass of supporters on both sides look no further than what their leaders tell them; the truth in our context is almost always politically tainted. All the businessmen in the urban areas who have boarded up their display windows and shopfronts know what they have to do from bitter experience. And this time, after four-and-a-half months of assurances that they have won, there will probably be great anger among the rank and file of APNU supporters if they are told that it is not so. And if there is anger, Mr Granger, who is not a Burnham or a Hoyte, may not be in a position to persuade them to accept reality and go home.
Already we have unhealthy developments, such as the Gecom Chair coming under attack, as well as her attorney and others who have appeared for opposition groups, and President Granger is apparently unable or unwilling to stop it. Surely even he can see how dangerous for the society and our future these trends are, or is it just a case of him shrugging his shoulders and saying, ‘après moi le déluge.’
While the reaction of the mass of supporters may possibly follow a traditional pattern, what is one to say of those of intelligence and education who have accepted the caretaker President’s fabrications? They are not a monolithic group; some may be utterly cynical, aware that their party has lost, but like their leader recklessly cooperating in promoting the fantasy. They may, however, also feel they have a ‘moral’ justification in keeping Mr Jagdeo – and they see Mr Ali merely as a puppet – out of power because it was during his watch that many African-Guyanese were killed by the Phantom Squad(s).
Others think that this is a golden opportunity for a period of shared governance while everyone works on a new constitution. Suffice it to say that had the APNU+AFC won, they would not be seeking to disregard the elections while they instituted shared governance for the purposes of drafting a new constitution. They would expect to negotiate the latter, if they still held that view, only after they were in office.
For many of the others it is a case of closing their minds to reason. Apart from the change in the position of the party, which first claimed to have won, and then said the PPP/C only won because thousands of people impersonated voters, a change which the party has never explained, they have not demanded to see the evidence of the fraud which is currently being alleged. And an allegation is far from being proof. But even without proof being supplied, and it hasn’t been, does it not strike them as strange that hundreds of their party polling agents in seven electoral districts of the country allowed through more than 115,000 impersonators? And this despite the fact that in 2015 CEO Lowenfield said that impersonation was impossible?
How do those party agents feel now? Were they asleep for long periods? Were they intellectually challenged, or were they perhaps visually impaired? And what about those in the party who appointed them? Did they not notice their appointees had problems? Did these same party agents work during the 2015 election? And if they did, did they have problems then? If they didn’t have problems then – and APNU+AFC won on that occasion – what went wrong this time?
In the end too those who trust Mr Granger’s account need to look at how all the observers and Caricom arrived at their conclusions, as well as follow the chronology of events given by people who were actually present. Second-hand information from those alleging fraud will not lead to the truth.
As said earlier, it is difficult to see how the caretaker President can hang on in this international climate, unless he has it in mind to go an outlandish route, and even that will not save him. For those who have stood by him up to now, the swearing in of a PPP/C president does not mean he will be there for the next ten years, despite all that has been parroted along those lines. It is time to look at how best to shape a divided society for the future and how to manage the new government. The path to progress is politically speaking not always what one thinks it is; history has its own pace and its own singularity.
And as for President Granger, the greatest service he can do the country now, apart from recognising the recount result, is to find a way to let down his supporters gently.