Closing the doors after the horse has bolted

Aug 18, 2009 Peeping Tom

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The announcement by the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) that it will allow observers, public counting of votes and scrutineers for the forthcoming elections within the party is a case of closing the door after the horse has bolted. All these measures will mean nothing, since the principal controversy at the last Congress was not about the accuracy of the vote count or whether persons voted who ought not to have voted, but rather about padding of membership rolls within party groups, leading to inflated delegate representation of some groups.

The last Congress of the party saw a serious inflation in membership of some groups. In fact, given the increase that was reported, this column was forced to conclude that within one year every single Guyanese would become a member of the main opposition party.

After the allegations arose about inflated membership of some groups, there were calls for these suspicious cases to be subject to a verification exercise, something that the party itself had been agitating for in national elections. It was argued that for the elections of the party to have any credibility, there needed to be verification of the membership of the groups since this has an effect on delegate representation.

Since it is the delegates that vote, if any grouping within the party has a delegate representation disproportionate to its real membership, it means that this group will have an unfair delegate representation.

The system is quite simple. Various party groups are represented at the Congress by members. The number of delegates which each group can send is dependent on the number of members that the group has. Thus, if there is padding of membership, that is, if a group claims to have fifteen hundred members when it only has ten, it means that this group will have more delegates at the Congress than it is entitled to and since it is the delegates that vote in the elections, it means that the elections would be free and fair.

The announcement by the PNCR that it will have observers to the voting process and public counting of ballots, therefore, does not address the fundamental concern which emerged at the last Congress and which is also likely to be an issue this time around: potential padding of the delegates’ lists.

What is needed is for the sanitization of the delegates’ lists to ensure that no group is over or under represented at the Congress. This can only be achieved through a verification exercise, something that cannot be achieved overnight.

To the credit of the PNCR it did allow for a process by which objections could have been made to membership lists. However this process did not go far enough, since it entailed the list of members of each group being sent back to the Chairperson of that group. Since the original membership lists would have emerged from the group itself, the process is tantamount to the group pronouncing on its own list.

A much better and satisfactory approach would have been for the PNCR to conduct a sample verification of select groups, by extracting from the total membership either a random or otherwise statistically representative small sample and having these verified through physical checks. This would have yielded any membership padding which was argued before it could impact on delegate representation. Such a sample verification would also be more effective in terms of cost and time.

In light of some of the allegations that emerged at the last Congress, the PNCR, if it was serious about transparency, would have ensured that the process leading to the accreditation of delegates was beyond criticism.

Instead, just a few days before the Congress gets underway, and in the midst of serious concerns about the transparency of the process, it has opted to announce measures that will guarantee at the most, a fair count.

What is at issue however is not a fair count. What is at issue is the fairness of the process which determines the number of delegates. The only way this process can be made fully transparent is for a verification exercise involving all the major nominees for leaders. All the talk about observers, and scrutineers and independent returning officers is a mere smokescreen which will not unfortunately remove the concerns that are presently hovering over the Congress.

A satisfactory verification of the party’s membership cannot now be achieved and this is why this column had proposed that the elections for the leadership of the party be deferred to a Special Congress. This however is not likely to occur, with the unfortunate result that the credibility of the Congress will be called into question.

The outcome of the Congress will be the usual appeals for unity and for differences to be set aside. Unity at all cost has however never been proven to be a winning formula. A party that is united, that lacks the internal dynamic of conflict, will eventually become complacent.

It would be much better that the party ensure that it is secure and intact through adherence of acceptable norms and rules, rather than through an empty and meaningless appeal to some ideal of unity, which serves but only to suppress dissent and discontent.

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