The case for live streaming

May 04, 2020 Editorial

We have said it before, and now say it again: let live streaming be. Let it take place before the watching local and distant world and add luster to the continuing impenetrable darkness that has been the only ingredient in Elections 2020. Let the mysteries be laid bare and be solved. Let this recount-long waited on, so much depended upon-be conducted in the most open and most scrupulous manner to give this nation something on which to go forward.
It is why we at this publication appeal to the APNU+AFC leadership and decision makers to do the honourable and principled thing and agree to standing down from any further objections to a full live streaming of the entire recount. We reach out to the APNU+AFC only, since it is the one group that is against the credibility-inducing, and confidence-confirming live streaming of what takes place from the first moment that the leaders and managers at GECOM signal the start of the still unfinalized recount apparatus and mechanics. We are restrained from making any similar exhortation to those from the other political parties, since they have all indicated their full support for live streaming.
We say this: if there is nothing to fear, then why the hesitancy and dogged obstinacy? We say that if the APNU+AFC coalition is all for a principled process, as it insists, then why the inexplicable hedging and stonewalling? Why engage in what raises so many questions and concerns about authenticity of intentions, cleanliness of commitment, and completeness of adherence to the democratic ideals so glaringly missing here, and now made more mandatory by the force of circumstances?
There should be no further association with what has failed and harmed and left naked before a bewildered world. To continue to object to live streaming is to keep things under the kind of close control that does not comfort anyone. It comforts neither adversaries nor observers nor many citizens wondering what deceptions may have been readied behind the scenes and now wait in the wings to be inserted and embedded into a process that has been rife with controversies from the inception.
No matter how kindly we attempt to look at this live streaming objection, we keep coming back to the same unhealthy, unsteady, and unconstructive place. To resist and object is to add more darkness to what is of the thickest darkness, a kind of perverse and sinister darkness. If nothing else, the days, without exception, since March 2, have been cursed with the mischievous and provocative, the heavy-handed and the unbelievable.
When the credible was called for, there was only the laughable, as in the antics of the Returning Officer for Region 4. When the trusted and principled should have been the order of the day, there have been evasion and avoidance. The president himself, a man much trusted by many, has suffered, has attracted some of the tarnishing that is inevitable when things deteriorate to this extent, when the road has been potholed and mined every step along the way.
The nation’s leader could do without such a scorching development, the nation itself is infinitely better off without that which has besmirched anyone and anything near to what has transpired. Live streaming would bring picture after picture before the public. It speaks for itself with its own revealing lights, its own technological presentations.
For all these reasons, we say let there be the light of live streaming of the recount, so that we Guyanese can put this thing to rest and move on to face all the hard tests that stand ahead. These are gruelling tests made so much more demanding by the COVID-19 virus, a full-fledged pandemic that, leaves us even more vulnerable, much more unprepared, and unequipped to deal with the challenges before us.
As for the presence of phones, it is our position that though there is value, there is also the potential to create the confusions that lead to the customary chaos so prevalent, where every move and development would be subject to endless misinterpretation and second-guessing. Give us live streaming and then let us count, tally and judge.

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