Elections are always a struggle

Mar 28, 2015 Editorial

It is amazing how a country like Guyana with its supposed high level of literacy, makes the holding of elections a problematic affair. In most other countries the holding of elections is so routine that people cast their vote and go on to work as if they had just taken a shot for the flu.
In the United States, employers grant the staff time to vote; in fact it is mandatory. The people who have to travel unimaginable distances to work but who fortunately have more than adequate public transport would be disciplined enough to join the line from very early. There is not much of a voters’ list. All that is required is the voter’s social security number.
And here we are talking about a country with a population more than 400 times the population of Guyana. In the other countries closer to home the problem is just as uncomplicated as in the other countries. Some of us argue that their small population allows them to have a clean voters’ list, but then some of us extend that argument to countries with larger populations than Guyana—Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.
Every country delivers its elections results within 12 hours; Guyana does so in a matter of days, adding tension and creating distrust. But first one must look at the issue of the voters’ list. There has been continuous registration so that every eligible voter would be captured. If someone does not wish to participate in the exercise then that person would not seek registration.
If one is a migrant the worst case scenario is that the person would not be around to vote. If the person is a government official then that person can enjoy provisions put in place for overseas voting. The names of the people in a diplomatic mission are sent to Guyana and the requisite ballots are released. If someone is dead, then rest assured, the person would not be at the polling station on Election Day.
All in all, the voting process should be quite simple but such is the dishonest nature of the people of this country that everything is viewed with distrust. We have identification cards but the system is still so that there is the distrust. One year there was the photograph of each voter alongside his name and that was deemed the worst election to be conducted in Guyana.
Now we have international organizations begging the media to help promote a violence free election. Of course, various media houses in the different countries support one political party or the other but the tenets of journalism must prevail. There must be the equitable airing of advertisements and the allocation of equitable space in the case of the print media.
There is the fear that reporters in Guyana would foment unrest. This does not happen in the civilized world so for people to expect this of reporters in Guyana is a serious indictment on the state of affairs in the country. It must be that the wider societies, including countries that became independent long after Guyana, have surpassed this country as civilized.
Against all possible odds, we have the state media operating as the private arm of the government and blocking opposition advertisements. Although this is illegal—there was a court ruling to outlaw such an act—no one media owner has been prosecuted.
And as if to keep an eye on the media as a parent would with a small child, each time at elections there must be a media code of conduct. It is as if a new set of media owners appear on the landscape for elections. In reality, the media houses have over the decades of their existence, failed to institute their own monitoring mechanisms. There is no media organisation to impose sanctions so some are allowed to act irresponsibly.
So once more the silly season is here and some of the people who profess to be media operatives behave as election campaign officers for the various political parties. And so we scramble to get supposedly intelligent people to act outside their skin to protect the country.

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