Only a fool breaks his own heart

Mar 29, 2020 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The APNU+AFC Coalition, and a few miscreants within the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), must be living in some other stratosphere. It is incomprehensible that they can believe that the world is going to buy the electoral stunt which they are attempting to pull. They need to wake up and come back down to Earth. There is no tolerance anymore in the free world for electoral rigging.
What took place with the District Four tabulation has no place in modern democracies, and it is not going to be entertained. Those who feel they can ride roughshod over electoral democracy, or can ride out the political storm caused by their actions, are misguided.
The free world will not countenance such conduct. The free world will not accept the legitimacy of any government emerging from rigged elections. And the free world is not going to encourage electoral rigging in the 21st century. Those who believe that they could have gotten away with electoral malpractice are not fit to lead this country or any other country.
There is no way that any APNU+AFC government is going to be accepted as the legitimate government of Guyana ever. The APNU+AFC Coalition will not be accepted ever as the legitimate winner of the elections of 2020, and will not be recognised as the new government of the day.
Even their friends in CARICOM will now be forced to isolate them. It would be unthinkable for the regional community to sit comfortably with an APNU+AFC official within a Heads of Government Conference. The Chairman of the Community has asserted that: “Any Government which is sworn in without a credible and fully transparent vote count process would lack legitimacy.” She said every vote must count.
No one needs to be a diplomat to decipher what she means. No one needs to be a lawyer to comprehend that the Caribbean Community will feel discomforted in having an illegitimate Head of State being in their midst. The stain of illegitimacy carries a pariah status.
David Granger or Khemraj Ramjattan will never be accepted by the international community as President and Prime Minister respectively. Someone needs to tell them this before they bring greater shame and harm to the country.
CARICOM must be tired of this old PNC trick of rigging and attempting to steal elections. In 1997, the PNCR refused to accept its defeat at the elections of that year. It unleashed fire and brimstone in the country. Three wise men flew in and brokered compromises, which included an audit of the results of the elections.
The audit was done by the Caricom team headed by eminent jurist Ulric Cross. The audit team went through each ballot box. The exercise took almost two months. At the end of it, the team found only marginal differences – a vote here and vote there – which would not have altered the overall results of the elections.
Desmond Hoyte’s reputation took a hit from which it never recovered. He is now viewed as an object of derision – a laughing stock who tried to turn back the clock of history.
Is that what the present leadership of APNU+AFC wants? Do they want to go down in history as benefitting from electoral rigging?
The international community knows full well who won the elections. They have no favourites. They want to see the rightful winner declared, and they will not relent until this is done. They are not fooled into thinking that the leadership of APNU+AFC are unaware that they lost the elections. They are not unaware of the plotters and agents involved in seeking to steal the elections.
Does anyone truly feel that the western governments do not know the mastermind behind this attempt?
The supporters of APNU+AFC also know that their coalition lost the elections. They know the truth. While they may not have seen the actual statements of poll, they, unlike their leaders, can read between the lines.
They know that if APNU+AFC had won, there would have been no need for the gymnastics, which took place during the District Four count. They know that if APNU+AFC had won, there would have been no need for the Barbados Prime Minister to say that there were ‘forces’ who are opposed to a recount. They know that if APNU+AFC had won the elections, they would have already made public their SOPs to prove that they won.
Right now, this country is undergoing a health crisis. This is a time when the country should be coming together to fight the coronavirus, but instead what we have is a protracted political stalemate, simply because some people believe that they can get away with blatant dishonesty.

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