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The PPP/C’s passion lies in free and fair elections

Feb 24, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

Lurlene Nestor, a strong supporter of caretaker President Granger wrote a letter in another newspaper recently. Her letterhead was headlined:
‘Mr. Jagdeo’s words and insinuations matter! – recent Stewartville rantings are recklessly dangerous.’
Nestor wrote, ‘I have never seen the PPP so obsessed with GECOM since the PPP’s twenty-three years in office”
Let’s begin from the beginning of the twenty-three which brings us to 1992. I don’t know how old Nestor was in that year suffice it to say that the PPP had more than a mere ‘obsession for GECOM’ and still has a passion for free and fair elections since then and long before then.
Historically and contemporarily, the obsession that Nestor refers to should really be placed at the footsteps of her own party.
It was her party that always had an obsession with GECOM, that is precisely why her founder leader appointed two of his judicial cronies Sir Donald Jackson and Sir Harold Bollers respectively to the Chairmanship of the then Elections Commission. Both presided, again and again over rigged elections from 1968 up to 1990. These were clear attempts at not just obsession but obsession to control and manipulate a Constitutional body.
The evidence is there for all to see.
Nestor’s current party boss and caretaker President attempted a double whammy when he appointed unconstitutionally, a close party comrade, Mr. Patterson as Chairman of GECOM only to have him booted out by the CCJ.
Clearly, another attempt at control and of obsession with GECOM.
The PPP’s has a passion for free and fair elections rather than an obsession with GECOM; however, since GECOM is the Constitutional body vested with the authority to give general orders and direction for the conduct of elections in Guyana, the PPP/C’s passion for free and fair elections cannot ignore Nestor’s party record, past and present, of attempting to penetrate, control and to influence GECOM to do its bidding.
Nestor claims she has “never seen Jagdeo and the PPP so obsessed with GECOM” Nestor obviously needs help. In the aftermath of the 2015 elections, the PPP/C mounted monthly protest demonstrations outside GECOM’s Kingston Office raising its voice against the way in which GECOM was being manipulated and demanding that then chairman Surujbally “must go!”
In this connection,several press statements were issued and published by mainstream print and electronic media.
If that is what Nestor calls “obsession,” then she should take note of the warning made in the PPP/C’s press release on the question of the skewed and compressed location of polling stations viz…
‘If necessary we are prepared to galvanise the tens of thousands of electors … in protest actions against GECOM.’
Nestor is free to brand the PPP/C’s actions as obsessions or whatever, the fundamental point is that the PPP/C is not known to be a laid back political force in this country to see Constitutional travesties being perpetrated and do nothing about it.
Therein lies the PPP/C’s passion for free and fair elections and intrinsically, its demand that GECOM to do what it is Constitutionally mandated to do, to deliver nationally and internationally accepted free and fair and credible elections.

Yours faithfully,
Clement J. Rohee

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