Charrandass was not the first and will not be the last

Jan 31, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The Charrandass Persaud (CP) “yes’ vote in the National Assembly on December 21, 2018 was a case of the PNCR getting a taste of its own medicine. What CP did on that eventual day, was no different to what the PNC engineered, in the run-up to the 1968 elections, when it passed two dubious Bills with the support of a United Force (UF) parliamentarian.
CP did not cross the floor. Crossing the floor has a different connotation to voting against your party. Crossing the floor involves a permanent change of place within the Assembly.
Crossing the floor is when someone decides to change sides. The 118 members of the Conservative party that recently sank Theresa May’s BREXIT agreement did not cross the floor; they simply voted against their own government.
The PNCR is fully knowledgeable of the difference between crossing the floor and voting contrary to party lines. After the 1964 elections, the PNC engineered persons to cross the floor and also to have someone vote against his party.
After the 1964 elections, the PNC held a minority in the National Assembly. Of the 53 seats, the PNC had 22 seats; the PPP, 24 seats and the United Force seven.
Post-election coalition was then allowable and therefore the PNC and the United Force formed a coalition to oust the PPP government. At the time, there was no recall legislation to deter parliamentarians from crossing the floor.
The United Force’s concern over rampant government corruption and the PNC machinations to seize control of the public purse, led to deep divisions within the coalition government. As such, Burnham decided that he had enough of coalition politics and later announced that he would never again enter into such an arrangement.
His solution to the problem was electoral fraud. As such, he hatched plans to rig the elections.
In order to do this, he needed to pass legislation that would allow him to control the election machinery and facilitate vote rigging. But he did not have a majority in the National Assembly and could not rely on the UF which was opposed to the two Bills. The PNC had by then engineered four defections – three from the PPP and one from the United Force. The four defections increased the PNC’s seats to 26 and reduced the PPP’s to 21 and the UF to six.
The majority in the 53 seat parliament was 27, but Burnham only had 26 seats. Burnham, however, had a card up his sleeve.
That card was named Rupert Clement Tello. He was a United Force parliamentarian and had once served in the interim government in 1953, as General Secretary of the Trade Union Congress and as President of the Manpower Citizens Association.
Tello sat on the United Force benches and like CP was from Berbice. He did not cross the floor; but in a shock move, just like CP’s, voted against his party and in support of the two Bills.
The rest is now history. Burnham seized control of national registration and instituted overseas voting.
With that control, the 1968 election was flagrantly rigged. D’Aguiar, an arch-enemy of the PPP, was forced to pronounce that “to call it an election is to give it a name it does not deserve; it was a seizure of power by fraud, not elections.”
Tello’s infamous vote was his swansong. After the 1968 elections, he never again set foot in the National Assembly.
He died in 1981. And in glowing tributes paid to him in the National Assembly, the PNC showed no gratitude for his vote which allowed it to seize control of the election machinery.

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