WE ARE ALL INNOCENT HERE!

May 18, 2020 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

A great deal of misinformation continues to be peddled about the 2020 General and Regional Elections. This happens when the narrative keeps shifting. Once you begin to stretch the truth, you have to continue doing so because one contradiction leads to another.
It was the APNU+AFC which bragged that the Recount would confirm its victory. But no sooner had the Recount commenced that the narrative began to change. It is now claimed that the elections was rigged by the Opposition. That opposition must have been highly incompetent in its rigging to have handed the Coalition a victory.
Now we are being told that every political party engages in bluff to their supporters. What is the difference between bluff and lies?
Other false claims are being made. It is now being suggested that the Head of the Observer Mission of the Organization of American States (OAS), who gave a damning account of the declaration of District 4 results, had arrived at conclusions about the vote after only about 10% of the Recount had been completed.
This is inaccurate. Bruce Golding arrived at his position about the District 4 Tabulation from what he and his fellow observers saw at the Ashmin’s Building during the declaration of the results. In his own words, he said it was the most transparent attempt to alter the results of an election.
The Recount of the votes has provided, thus far, confirmation of that ‘transparent attempt’. It has validated the claims that those controversial results that were declared by Mingo were not consistent with the Statements of Polls and, now, with the ballots as cast in the elections.
The OAS was one of the observer groups to the elections. These observers, including Caribbean Community, the Carter Center, the Commonwealth and the OAS observers did not come on their own. They were invited to come here by the Government. They received letters inviting them to come here. They were accredited by the very Government, which is denying permission for the Carter Center to return.
The Guyana Elections Commission was interested in observers for the recount. On April 27, this newspaper reported that GECOM was expected to begin to invite the other observers, apart from Caricom, to witness the recount.
The government has shifted its narrative here. It first hinted that the reason for not granting permission for the Carter Center to return had to do with the changing health situation in the country.
Then it said that the Center could reapply. When they did reapply, the excuse was two-fold, one the health situation in the country and, second, that Caricom was credible enough – the latter indicating that no additional observers was necessary.
If GECOM is interested in having the observers, it would constitute interference in the mandate of GECOM for the government to decide about the most legitimate interlocutors. Caricom has never indicated that it considered itself the most legitimate interlocutors. GECOM has never done so. But yet the government wants to determine who should observe a process being undertaken by GECOM.
The media should request confirmation for the Chairman of Caricom, as to whether it is the regional body’s position that it considers itself the most legitimate interlocutors for the Guyana elections.
What does the Government have to hide? Why does it not wish to have the Carter Center, complete its work?
This column is not aware of any opinion poll which was conducted in Guyana to determine that a significant section of the population was unwelcoming to the return of the Carter Center.
Those who are now attempting to make the international community a scapegoat for the blatant rigging of the tabulation exercise, should again be reminded that it was the same Carter Center whose findings in the 2015 polls were welcomed by those who now do not wish to have them back.
The mouthpieces of the government are becoming strangers to the truth. It is now being contended that there were dead people on the List of Electors and this was because the Court had ruled that names could not be removed from the list.
The Court never ruled that dead people could not be purged from the list. In fact, there is a process of removing those who are dead from the list and those not removed, initially, could be deleted via the Claims and Objections process.
As for those who claim that there is “no guilty race”. Did they not know that we are all innocent here!

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