One of history’s most farcical, bizarre election campaigns

Mar 01, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There isn’t anything about Guyana’s 2020 election campaign that appeared normal, logical and comprehensible. Throughout the 20th century and the two decades of the 21st, you have to look hard to find a country’s election campaign that was so incomprehensible, amorphous, Illogical and oxymoronically speaking, comically macabre as what took place in Guyana recently.
We start with the proliferation of third parties. Against a background of dominated territory by two powerhouses for the past 70 years, it was commonsensical for these newcomers to join forces to stop the two Goliaths’ parliamentary domination. Tomorrow the electorate votes and none of these new parties (about eight of them) have joined forces. Not even two of them have merged. Three of them agreed to share their votes; only that.
This mysterious and ugly stance of these new formations must have been the most generous political gifts the PNC and PPP have received since the 1950s. Once the deadline for merger passed, the leadership of the PPP and PNC, probably went to their respective places of worship, looked up at the ceiling and said, “thank you God”
Next is the PPP. Understanding the PPP since its birth has been a task no genius in the world could accomplish. Why would a party that since 1957 has won every general election and local government poll in Wakenaam, and ruled Guyana for 23 consecutive years, want to go to Wakenaam with a promise that if it wins it will develop the island.
The island was underdeveloped in the 23 years your party had been in power (1992-2015) so why put in a campaign appearance? The Pavlovian souls will vote for you anyway, so don’t insult them by promising development funds that you never gave for the 23 years when you were in power. At least you could have spared them your barefaced sadism.
And talking about sadism, the opposite is masochism. You have to be masochistic to vote for a party that was in power for 23 years yet turn out in your numbers to hear false promises.
Next is APNU+AFC. Guyana has no political counterpart in the world. What APNU+AFC did in the 2020 campaign is impossible to find in another territory. Throughout the length and breadth of this country, there are posters and banners urging citizens to vote for APNU+AFC. And only the visage of the leader of one of the parties adorns the posters and banners.
So you look at the stuff and you say, “umm, strange maan, where is the face of the leader of the other half of the Coalition, is this really a coalition?” But things are far more bizarre than this. I am willing to bet that if you show me a similar situation about what I will describe below, then accompany me to the owner of Kaieteur News, Mr. Glenn Lall, and ask him to give you half my salary. I know you cannot win me, but be brave and bet me. Call me if you think you have won. My cell is 614-5927. My email is [email protected].
Here we go. Two independent parties have joined forces to contest the national election. They signed a covenant named the Cummingsburg Accord to share power if they win. But what is inside the document cannot be made public to the leadership body of both parties and the electorate whose votes these parties are asking for.
Name me one other country that could be so barefaced, stupid and pompous. Above I refer to masochism in reference to the voters who opt for the PPP. Isn’t this another example of masochism on show? Why you would vote for a political party you admire and support, and that you want to head your country’s government, but that party cannot tell you and the nation and their national executives what is inside an election arrangement, which they made with another party?
Pay careful attention to the two words I used, “election arrangement”.
The Cummingsburg Accord is an election document. Election means people voting for an organisation to administer their country. Why then would you vote for an entity to govern the affairs of your country when it met with another entity, drafted a binding working relation, and made the document secret? Obviously, you have to ask yourself, “What could be on that paper that could be so special, so sensitive that it will never be known?”
How do you know that this surreptitious piece of paper does not include the agreement between the two organisations that if they win power, they will rename Guyana, Atlantis? You still have one more day left to find out.

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