The plan to rig the 2011 election may be taking shape

Feb 10, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

In the last two years on this page, one of my themes is that once protest against dictatorial government ceases to exist, the elected dictatorship of the PPP will do whatever it wants. It is interesting to note that spin doctor at OP, Dr. Randy Persaud, in a published letter to this newspaper two years ago wrote that the Government’s programmes have been stalled because of the PNC’s activism of “mo fyaah/slo fyaah.” In other words, Persaud was saying that the opposition was achieving something. In Persaud’s calculations, this something was not positive but in political terms, depending how you look at it, the PNC was doing what opposition groups feel it should do – bring the government to the negotiation table. And Desmond Hoyte’s strategy of “mo fyaah/slo fyaah” did bring the PPP to the conference room.
Macbeth’s witches have been banished by Mr. Corbin, “mo fyaah/slo fyaah” has been extinguished, and elected dictatorship has become a carnivorous animal that will reduce this nation once more to an international pariah. The unthinkable has been embarked upon by elected dictatorship in Guyana. What should never come out of the mouths of every Guyanese citizen has been spoken by one of the PPP leaders, Mr. Ralph Ramkarran – Guyana should reintroduce voting for Guyanese living abroad. In effect what Mr. Ramkarran is saying was right to remove it while the PNC was in power, but now the PPP is in government, it should be restored.
Mr. Ramkarran gave no consideration as to why Guyanese should put up with overseas voting under the PPP when it wasn’t right under the PNC. No doubt the answer will be an easy one – with the PNC, the vote was manipulated. But why should Guyanese feel it would not be under the PPP? For a start, this writer feels overseas voting will be open to brutal rigging if it is reinstituted. Since Mr. Ramkarran made that advocacy, the AFC has disagreed and more than forty persons (I counted them) consisting of journalists, university lecturers, businessmen among others told me that they hope Guyana does not go down that road again.
We have gone down that road already. When these people spoke to me about ROAD, they mean the road to overseas voting. But my interpretation of ROAD is different. For me, we have returned to that road that we were on in the seventies and eighties – the path to dictatorship. The call for the reintroduction of voting for foreign-based Guyanese is just another step along that pathway. If Desmond Hoyte was alive and Macbeth’s witches were stoking “mo fyaah/slo fyaah” it would have been unimaginable to utter that despicable, fearful, loathsome word. Guyana must forget about voting from foreign land in our national elections. It has left a bad taste in the mouth of this entire nation.
Unless this country moves away from its old culture that the PNC and the PPP stamped on the nation’s cloth 50 years ago, then forget about foreign voting. It is interesting to recall how the rigging occurred. Guyana’s embassies were the facilitators of the voting process, meaning then that the people who were contesting the elections were in the government and were the bosses of the embassy officials who were conducting the polling. In those days there were more independent civil servants than today. The people who will have to register Diaspora Guyanese and conduct the voting are PPP members and supporters who have inundated the foreign missions of this country.
In Barbados, the representative of the Guyana Government makes no pretense about his party affiliation. Are these the people that will supervise the voting? Mr. Ramjattan of the AFC has told the press that he thinks mischief is underway to bring about overseas voting. He cites a conspiracy between Corbin and the PPP to achieve this end.
But if Mr. Corbin is engaged in such a dark and dangerous covenant then he has to be a popular, towering, charismatic figure inside the PNC for PNC leaders to accept their own suicide at the hands of Mr. Corbin, assuming that Mr. Ramjattan’s information is water-proof.
My own feeling is that I believe the PPP is desperately fighting to remain in power and they will try the overseas thing. It will be up to all stakeholders to speak up to save this nation. Guyanese will not accept overseas voting because it will result in the rigging of the election. If the 2011 is fraudulent, not even Corbin and his friends in the PNC can save Guyana.

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The plan to rig the 2011 election may be taking shape

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