Another election and another tribal division

Mar 01, 2020 Features / Columnists, My Column

---

Guyana’s landscape always changes when elections come around. For some reason friends become suspicious. Their conversation is tilted if they believe the other party holds a different political view.
This is always the case at this time. Indeed, people hold strongly to their views. What is sad is that even intelligent people fail to hold conversations. They do not want to listen to the other person and more often than not, tempers flare.
I saw a report which predicted doom and gloom for the elections. Not since the 1997 elections has there been post-elections violence. The violence began in 1992 when hundreds of people never got a chance to exercise their franchise.
I remember the confusion. People turned up at polling stations and saw their names on the list, but when they entered the polling place, the poll clerks could not find their names. This happened because skullduggery was afoot.
People eventually went to the elections commission headquarters where, as a palliative, they were allowed to vote. I remember the late Dr. Ptolemy Reid telling them to go home, that their votes would not count.
There was a lot wrong. People in the international community wanted the incumbent to lose. There has never been such a debacle again. But there were other grounds for dissatisfaction. At least one was created. It had to do with the nationality of the presidential candidate for the 1997 elections.
Those elections were challenged. The court hearing revealed some interesting happenings in the polling place.
Each polling clerk is supposed to sign the statement of poll. It turned out that many of the statements presented at the final count were not signed. The originals were substituted.
I have repeatedly heard talk about rigging. All the talk was directed at the Forbes Burnham administration. But long after Burnham died, there was electoral rigging. In one case, the results from Kitty were the last to arrive at the Guyana Elections Commission.
When asked about the reason, the then chairman, the late Doodnauth Singh, smugly replied that the runners must have gone to the Olympics instead of heading to the commission.
As recent as the 2015 elections, attempts were made to smuggle fake statements of poll into the commission. The Chief Elections Officer knows who, but never revealed his finding.
This time around, there is a vastly bloated electoral list. With a population of some 750,000 there are some 660,000 potential voters. The courts prevented any sanitising of the list beyond removing some of the names of those who died.
This time around, a lot of effort has been made to ensure that there will be credible elections. At the last minute, there were changes to some polling places. Certain private residences were scrubbed, much to the annoyance of the People’s Progressive Party.
Statistics revealed that the voter turnout as recorded by those polling places appeared to be higher than at any other polling place.
The period leading up to the elections was interesting. The major political parties attracted large crowds; the city was festooned with flags and other symbols of the political parties; and people were firm in their support.
I saw large numbers of young people campaigning, something that was lacking among young people in the past. It was as though they were apathetic. Not so this time around.
There were reports of some confrontations. One young man on the Essequibo Coast claimed that he was attacked and beaten because of his political choice. A campaign party ran into some hostility in Laing Avenue.
People removed the symbols of the other party, but overall the campaign was peaceful. I saw a report by the Ethnic Relations Commission, which said that some of the comments from political platforms tended to inflame.
What was invidious were the comments on social media. There were scathing comments on the politicians and their parties, fake reports and even blatant untruths about people. In one case, there was what purported to be an interview with Brian Hunt, the then Charge d’Affaires of the United States Embassy in Georgetown. I was the interviewer for Prime News.
Whoever was the bright guy simply re-edited the report to the extent that Brian Hunt’s mouth was saying one thing and the audio was something else.
Of course, there were the chats on social media. I saw some interesting comments, some people presenting what they claim to be facts but what was hopelessly wrong information, all this to score political points.
There was one writer who suggested that people would begin to stock up on victuals in preparation for whatever happens after tomorrow. I am surprised that one would want to suggest violence in this day and age.
The sun will come up tomorrow; Guyana will continue to be the country it is with people going about their business.
What I would like to see is a quick report. The system is such that the Guyana Elections Commission must verify the various statements of poll before making the final announcement.
But I do know that before midnight, the political parties will know the results. Their agents are going to send in photographs of the statements of poll. Each party will make preliminary announcements, but they must be careful not to stir anger.
And when it is all over, there will be the normal rhetoric about electoral rigging.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

---

---