Independence, elections, skepticism, and exhaling

May 27, 2018 Countryman, Features / Columnists

By Dennis Nichols

Do politicians realize how overbearing they become when trumpeting their own or their political party’s achievements while debasing those of their opponents, even when some think they do it with self-effacing modesty?

As far as I can remember here in Guyana, no political party or its followers has ever done the latter or openly admitted to wrongdoing, like election manipulation, since I started following things political as a child after the 1961 elections won by the People’s Progressive Party. I was only eight then, but I recall some confusion (not cries of rigging) when persons heard that the PNC had won some time before the official announcement was made.

A few years later, after the 1964 poll, that sense of uneasiness returned when one day while walking near the Metropole Cinema, I saw the words ‘Cheated Not Defeated’ bannered across Freedom House on Robb Street.

Without knowing if there was any truth to the phrase, I allowed it to prick my conscience, and to continue doing so periodically over the years. Decades later, there was something akin to closure when I read what was understood to be declassified material related to the political web ensnaring local politics from ‘puppet-master’ spinners in the USA and the UK, to the detriment of Cheddi Jagan and his party.

Being born as an independent country just 52 years ago, Guyana is still a youngster in nation years. For much of that time, we seemed to have been stuck in an extended phase of arrested development in our version of the one-step-forward-two steps-backward dance.

A few commentators say we’ve been dancing close to the edge of the stage, and could have fallen off a few times. But somehow we haven’t. (Perhaps providence has moulded an invisible hedge around our country that only hindsight will reveal when politics, poor management, and election wrong-ups no longer plague our nation).

In 1966, my thirteen year-old self had only a simplistic understanding of what independence meant for British Guiana. In spite of that, I was caught up in the thrill of what others were expressing, and a feeling that something good and great was happening that would take us to higher heights, or at least a comfortable altitude.

But the uneasiness persisted, and with the events in the 1962-1964 disturbances still relatively fresh in my mind, skepticism had already taken hold of me. After independence, elections continued, and politicians continued to exclaim “Free; fair” or “rigged; ridiculous”, both of which became repetitive and fulsome to the ears of many Guyanese. I am one.

After the 1964 elections, there was a see-saw of experiences and emotions over the next 20 years as Guyana became a Republic, nationalization peaked, more contentious elections were held, the economy buckled, the value of our local currency plummeted, and our executive president, despite growing unpopularity among a section of society, looked set for life.

Then he died. And Hugh Desmond Hoyte took over.

National elections continued along with strident shouts of either affirmation or condemnation from the two main political groups, from then to 2015, including of course the watershed poll of 1992 when the PNC yielded power to the PPP in the vaunted ‘return to democracy’.

Truth is sometimes relative, and history may be shaped to suit particular narratives. From experience, this seems to be a valid observation, so I don’t necessarily trust the words of those who declare their truths even when evidence is presented in support of same. Yet, I would admit that it is likely elections were indeed rigged in Guyana previous to 1992. But what about after?

Here’s something to consider: A PPP-supporter cousin of mine confided in me that in the 1997 elections, he was allowed to vote six times at poll locations in two heavily-predominant PPP rural districts. Should I doubt his claim? If true, was this an isolated occurrence? Common sense answers ‘No’ and questions the freeness and fairness (even relatively so) of that, and subsequent elections.

No one should doubt that civic and political exercises such as a national election and its outcome can be tweaked and shaped by persons with motives far removed from integrity and national good. Claims of this kind of manipulation have been made, so many times in so many countries that it often seems more the rule than the exception.

The online source worldatlas.com tells us that ‘most elections around the world have been characterized by cases of rigging and fraud’ usually by increasing the vote share of the preferred candidate or reducing the votes of the opponent. It lists some of the most corrupt elections in the past century, from Nazi Germany to the general elections in Turkey three years ago, but unsurprisingly, nothing about Guyana. Small fry?

Another online source does however, using our 1985 poll under Mr. Hoyte as one of ‘4 famously rigged elections’ placing HDH, unfairly I would declare, in the company of Haiti’s (Papa Doc) Duvalier, Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem, and Liberia’s Charles King in elections nearly a century ago.

Didn’t Mr. Hoyte abandon overseas votes and limit proxy voting as concessions to the Opposition? Didn’t Mr. Hoyte also refuse to agree to count votes at polling places? With these questions in mind, one may ask if give-and-take manipulation is not a kind of default element in national elections – and what about that strange Electoral College thing in United States presidential elections? Some say it is manipulative.

No matter how elections go and governments follow; no matter how smugly the winners’ crow or how vociferously the opposition opposes, it all gets wearisome over time. Even itchy ears need occasionally to blot out the confusion of words from political mouths and mouthpieces. ‘Free’, ‘fair’, ‘rigged’ and ‘cheated’ are words that mean or suggest little when political opponents use them, even outside of elections, like the continuous thread of ‘free and fair’ sloganeering in Guyana after 1992. Remember what my cousin told me, but also my innate skepticism.

By now, many of you may be recuperating after doing your independence thing yesterday, carnival and all. Hopefully, there would have been little or no politicizing of the action. If so, take a deep breath and smell the (national) cook-up. Two years from now and almost every day in between you’ll be bombarded with earfuls of quarrelsome politics, or worse. For the time being, continue to exhale. And Happy Independence Day – belatedly!