Elections madness, Elections Mischief, Elections Stupidity!

Feb 24, 2020 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,

In this the last week prior to that date with national destiny, with individual and group soul discovery, on March 2, I share some observations and thoughts on the unsparing and unalterable character of this troubling season. I look and listen at the goings-on and I am taken back to the age of pagan sacrifices, human sacrifices. For, at the centre of this tortured process, this is what men and women volunteer of themselves, after already luring and then hurling others of like mind (or uncertain mind) to their demise in one political blood offering after another. Unfortunately, this is where all the run-ups in this elections season lead; I am not optimistic in the least.
I read of the Coalition’s claim that one of its own has been attacked and injured in what the President himself stepped forward to say of the incident: “It is not criminal or social; it was politically motivated” as reported by an online news outfit. If the emerging details of the attack are accurate, and as to its motivations also, then-to make the understatement of this antagonistic and emotionally charged electoral time-the outlook is bleak. Not so bleak for between now and next Monday but, as I believed all along, beyond that date and the process of turning up and voting. To repeat another bland understatement, the bigger troubles reside with the counting and the biggest of all in the declaring and accepting of the results. To put things mildly, I do not like what I hear. I do not like what I assess and sense.
On the matter of counting, someone shared with me on Sunday an exit poll from some unknown sources that had a pie chart indicating that over two-thirds of the Joint Services vote went to the opposition. It was within minutes after my return from prayers; it is at times like these that I am glad for the spirituality with which I am graced. It helps me to manage the mischief, the utter foolishness, the sheer incredibility of the brazenness that saturates the Guyanese political bog. From my perspective, an exit poll result like that (67%) is the equivalent to one of those long-ago elections in Egypt or some other dictatorship pretending at democracy and sharp familiarity with the science of mathematics measurement, where there used to be 99.9% voter turnout and almost the same percentage for the incumbents. Sharp familiarity, indeed, it has to be when 67% of the Joint Services, as peopled and from history and pattern, reportedly cast the ballot for the opposition.
But I detect the groundwork for mischief in the making. This is of a group preparing to shout fire even before there are any people in the theater; that group will shout in an empty forest, if only to get attention that it is being disadvantaged, that trees are in the way. I can only imagine the level of the howls when national voting takes place next week. I did hear one that left me staggered, as I could not believe that such an arrangement ever existed as part of our voting process. It is where officially approved and recognised polling places included private residences. I am blown away. Almost literally. For that is the customisation of conditions for crookedness; I don’t care whose residence is being used, be it man of God, foreign observer, (even my own home). It should be noticed that I didn’t include whether the owner of the residence used was a PNC supporter or PNC one. I don’t care, just don’t want to hear about this abomination. It is just not done! It is the height of asininity.
In a country where allegations of cheating and fraud are so rampant as to be second nature, how could this be? Even if it was allowed to meander along before because of some mutual agreement, this should have been eliminated long ago, with matter closed. I say all of this because, in this society, even if one (repeat one) political group were to be the only entrant and contestant in general elections, it would not surprise me if the winning group declared that it was robbed. Just the nature of the monster and how far we have deteriorated, how dumb we have become relative to elections.
As part of the dumbness, there are those walking around with pious faces and numb step, while they mutter and stutter about disenfranchisement. Some have not lost their marbles; they didn’t have any from the inception, when such a claim could be made. I could understand if there were no public places available, or no alternative arrangement made, and the residences were discontinued just like that; but in the circumstances, I assert that this discontinuation should have happened before.
Now even as I tender this, I foresee the stage being set for strident squabbling of disenfranchisement after March 2.
Every time I think I understand this country (and its natives), I have to correct myself.
Then there was the one involving air travel from Ogle to the hinterlands, and where the contention from opposition people was that its operators were being sidelined and prevented from travelling to do urgent and timely political work. The last time I checked, and that was decades ago, the Guyana Airways Corporation was taken out of operations, wasn’t it? If this is lost on the numerous mud-heads around here, this means that the private sector oversees and runs local aviation travels.
Oh, well…
As I watch and hear all of the foregoing, I realise that however the March 2 electoral goose is cooked, it will be found highly unacceptable by some group. A Guyanese Thanksgiving, it will not be.

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

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