The beast that comes out of the abyss

May 21, 2020 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,

I read of the recent histrionics-more like antics-of ranking coalition figures publicly exhibiting what they believe are spirited and persuasive defenses of its elections position. The more I read the more I was reminded of the frolics of the Three Stooges colliding with each other as they rushed pell-mell across one unfamiliar and unwisely chosen pathway after another. The three immortals usually fell over one another, or flat on their faces in unceremonious piles. This is what I saw as I observed their gyrations, exaggerations, protestations, and whatever else was drummed up to support an increasingly troubled position.
But in the midst of all those verbal gymnastics, there was something that should be given attention. It gave me pause, for in it I sense a long and winding road ahead. The little gem did not come with the flourish of a trumpet’s blast, but on quiet purposeful feet, a whisper almost. It was not scriptural, but there it was: the beast that comes out of the abyss; for Guyana, it could mean the apocalyptic.
From the lips of Hon. Minister Cathy Hughes, of the caretaker/interim/makeshift government, there are those three letters OLE, as in the Official List of Electors. It had to come up sooner or later, and there it is, this monster in the midst, a raging beast like before, and a more ravenous one it will be in the stormy days ahead. It was just a matter of time, before this long disputed and long unsettled OLE came back to dump a lorry of sand in the engine room of Elections 2020. If not now, then later. I promise.
As relevant as it is to the national conversation on credibility of any national elections, with this one taking the cake, I tack a course away from speaking to anything about bloated, though it definitely is nothing else. I simply say that it has been exhumed at the worst possible time and it has to be dealt with, since it forms the basis for so much sharp and unmoving contentiousness. The questions are these: what do we do in the days ahead? I ask this, because the folks raising a ruckus currently will use as weapon and incitement via different manifestations; traction comes easily.
I say this, because this OLE has its disciples, many loud undisciplined children. They will have their say, their furious voices heard clearly. For those who care to pay attention to what was waiting for ventilation, it sounds like this: that list cheats us and we will not be cheated or stay cheated. There is a determined ring to that chant, which does not require either much encouragement or any imagination as to its considerable power to put a damper on the way things unfold down the road, presidential guarantee and all.
Whoever thought that this was not going to happen and that the recount would sneak by without accounting for that, shall I say, material aberration and monstrosity needs an overdose of strong laxatives, a daily one. As it stands, the existence of the OLE in its current considerable bulk will be an essential component of the conversations and developments later. As the still honorable minister did remind her immediate audience, as well as the unseen one: “if there was a claims and objections period… We would have made all these objections and it would have been sorted,” and after she was corrected, “There was a claims and objections period…but remember that period was halted.” In other words, stonewalled and sabotaged. That, too, sounds like rich soil.
For emphasis, I think what I am hearing on the coalition’s position is this: we had severe concerns about the list (OLE), we objected strenuously and repeatedly, and we were patronized for a little bit, only for the plug on efforts to trace and remedy the list pulled too soon. The whole of Guyana may have forgotten the thorny issues from the coalition camp with the OLE. Now it is back and fuels further the hovering storms. I doubt that it is going to disappear gently again.
This understanding has to come rapidly: the matter of the OLE is not some untidy and inconvenient loose end. On the contrary, it was one of the cornerstones of elections clashes prior to March 2nd, and now it rises again, but this time as the chief cornerstone propping up the whole edifice that is Guyana Elections 2020. There are no two ways around this, and now to our tremendous detriment, it is possibly the worst haunting that has to be handled head-on and without equivocation or any of the earlier evasions that brought us to this fateful juncture. The chickens come home to roost, if not before “acceptance” then down the road.
There is no great profoundness in any of this, merely the basics of where we fell short and were foolish enough to believe that the OLE had died a natural death. I do not think that it did.

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

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