APNU SHOULD APOLOGIZE TO THE PEOPLE OF GUYANA

Jan 19, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

APNU has no reason to be fearful of a snap election. It is the Guyanese people who have to be fearful. After what APNU put this country through, the fear is not the holding of elections but whether APNU would be willing to accept the will of the people.
APNU made a big hue and cry about the conduct of the 2011 elections. Suspicion was cast on the results of those elections. Their supporters felt that they were robbed and this stemmed from the suspicion that was generated by APNU inspired street protests.
There was a call for an all-party verification of the elections results, furthering the suspicion.
After the unethical protests by its youth arm in front of the homes of individuals, the Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission eventually consented to provide APNU with copies of statements of polls, even though APNU ought to have had in its possession most of these obtained from its polling agents in the respective polling stations.
While APNU also complained about the slow process of declaring the results, the very party ought to be aware that any minor mistake could be blown out of proportion and bring the entire electoral process into suspicion. As such GECOM was fully justified in taking its time so as to avoid any mistake being used as a pretext for calling the election results into question.
This is what the PNC did in the 1997 elections. It has thousands of its supporters marching through the streets of Georgetown, acts which led to instability with huge losses from the economy, something that Guyana has not recovered from. The supporters were saying that their votes had been stolen. Many of these persons innocently felt that the elections were stolen from their party when all along this was not the case.
The PPP was forced to agree to an audit of the results and when the results came out the PNCR was disgraced in the eyes of the entire world. The results of that audit were deemed to be insufficient to alter in any significant way the results of the elections.
While complaining about the slow pace of declaring the 2011 results, APNU itself was taking its own good time in counting the results of the 2000-odd statements of poll which were given to the party in digital format.
After weeks and under intense pressure from the media, the party finally broke its silence with the laughable excuse that it had found discrepancies and would make its final report known later. It also demanded hard copies of the statements of poll. It is a wonder that it did not ask for the ballot boxes.
The Guyanese people, however, have been this way before, but people’s memories are short and therefore there were many who were still hoping that APNU would find something that would give the partnership victory.
Then realizing that there was never any credible basis for questioning the results or demanding an all party verification, APNU began to set the stage for the announcement that its audit of the results would not change the overall outcome of the elections. In short the audit would not provide the basis for establishing that the PPP did not win the election.
To prepare the groundwork for this admission, reports began to be circulated that there was an attempt by a senior operative in the Guyana Elections Commission to announce the PPP as having 33 seats and this mistake had to be corrected.
Well, the Guyanese people were not swallowing this so easily. In 1997, the Chairman of the then Guyana Elections Commission took a decision to announce the results of the elections and to declare Janet Jagan as the President.
The laws of Guyana were later changed under opposition pressure to ensure that the Chairman was no longer the person to do this but rather the Chief Elections Officer. But more importantly, any such declaration could only be made after a meeting of the Commission itself. Thus, even if there was a mistake in calculations, the Chief Elections Officer cannot make a declaration without the knowledge and approval of the full Commission.
This is the law and therefore the notion that there was some plan to declare the PPP as having a majority cannot be taken seriously since mistake or no mistake, it is the Commission which has to approve of the results.
Now APNU has the temerity to tell the Guyanese people not to expect that the discrepancies that have been identified will alter the results of the elections. This is weeks after the elections and after almost spoiling the Christmas of the entire nation.

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APNU SHOULD APOLOGIZE TO THE PEOPLE OF GUYANA

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