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LACK OF DEMOCRATIC MATURITY STILL EXISTS WITHIN SOME PARTIES
Dec 12, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
On the weekend before the general elections of November 28, Guyanese from all walks of life emptied the grocery shelves in all of the major supermarkets. Despite having a peaceful outcome to the 2006 elections, the Guyanese public was taking no chances and were stocking up just in case there were problems.
It normally takes a few days for the election results to be made known and during this period most businesses and schools would usually remain closed. Parents do not send their children to school until they are certain that the worst is over and many workers prefer to stay at home rather than risk getting caught in any protests that accompany the elections.
Most homes in Guyana were well stocked. The lines in the supermarkets were long from early morning way into late Saturday and Sunday night. People were getting as much food as they could in case they were forced to stay indoors for a long time.
This stocking up has had it consequences. Consumers would have been forced to utilize precious funds that they would otherwise need for their Christmas shopping and so it is quite possible that within the next few weeks some persons are going to have to dip into their savings simply because of the elections.
Most people openly admitted that the reason why they were stocking up had to do with the possibility of post-electoral violence, but if you asked them from which party they expected this violence or disturbance to emanate, they generally looked at you as if you were dumb. They expected that you would know the source that caused them to have to stock up so heavily on groceries just weeks before their big Christmas shopping.
In fact, it is anticipated that there is not going to be the anticipated burst in shopping for groceries for this Christmas since most persons have stock to tidy them over until perhaps after next February. The supermarkets did more than brisk business. Most of their supplies were exhausted by the time Election Day came around and they have had to restock since.
This mad rush to buy foodstuff in the run up to national elections does not confirm to the applause that Guyana got for the manner in which the elections were conducted. While the country was praised for the maturation of democracy and for running off a fair and generally free election, there were fears within the society that there could be trouble.
Even before the elections got going, some of the foreign missions to Guyana indicated that they would no longer field their own observer missions but would be part of larger groupings. This was a vote of confidence in the detailed system of checks and balances that the Guyana Elections Commission had put in place.
The conduct of the elections has been praised. The systems worked well again just as they did in 2006 and for this Guyana was said to have matured as a democracy.
But where the maturity has been lacking has been the willingness of some of the participating parties to accept their defeat. This is political immaturity at its highest and detracts from the pride that all Guyanese should feel that the dirty stain of electoral rigging and fraud is now firmly behind us.
Political parties have the right to have a presence at every polling station. If they exercise their right in front of their polling agents, they would be in receipt of the statements of polls giving the results for every polling station. Practically of course, no party is ever able to be at all polling stations but would have a presence sufficient to know hours after the polls would have closed the outcome of the elections. The AFC knew hours after the polls closed that it held the balance of power.
It will undermine the credibility of the electoral process if political parties cannot accept their defeat with their heads held high. Guyana has made tremendous progress is removing the stigma of the past which has tainted elections in this country from 1968 right through to 1985. That period is over and while there will always be room for improvement in systems, the greatest improvement is for those who have failed to achieve their electoral objectives to accept the will of the people, assess the results and plan to do better in the future.
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