PPP trying to drown out APNU+AFC allegations of electoral anomalies

May 27, 2020 Letters

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Dear Editor,

The usual armchair letter writers, residing abroad, have surfaced and are attempting to flog the PPP’s dead horse of a declaration of the results on the basis of the recount, despite widespread allegations of voter irregularities on Election Day. When those supposed regularities occurred during the initial count process, few pressed for a similar declaration. Funny how minds waver and are attempting to jettison voter fraud.

Rakesh Rampertab, in letter published on 25 May in Stabroek News, in a similar view to the Leader of the Opposition’s hastily called Saturday 23 May press conference, attempts to question access to death certificates and their availability to scrutinize an election. Their claims that an elections petition is needed flies in the face of having a transparent elections. If there is such a credible source of evidence, all parties and observers should be interest to get to the root of the problem, not choose sides of convenience.

Baytoram Ramharack also on 25 May, in Kaieteur News presented a flawed analysis purely on the basis of limited statistical data, theorizes his work, and limits consideration of a corrupted machinery on Election Day which gave rise the huge number of ‘observations’ of fraud. Instead he chose his usual measure of ethnic numbers to smokescreen us to think along ethnic lines, and thus condition the result in that order, by showing Indians have an ethnic majority. With the PPP receiving declining voter numbers in 1997 elections onwards, 221,352 (1997), 210,013 (2001), 183,887 (2006) and 166,340 (2011), and their abysmal governance failures and massive corruption allegations leading up to 2015, how would their voting numbers have increased to 202,656 in 2015 with a declined Indian population? (We still await the 2020 count). What would have accounted for this dramatic rise in 2015, would it be the badly mismanaged sugar industry, squandering away rice proceeds from farmers through the Venezuela deal, increased piracy in the fishing sector or Guyana becoming the number one transit point for narcotics in the region?

Ramharack’s ethnic analysis tries to pull the wool over our eyes into the flagrant violations now noticed in the recount. For the APNU+AFC to now challenge the recount results, not waiting until the end, but from the beginning, is a huge indication that the party is interested in transparency of the process on elections day. Susan Rodrigues’ half-baked analysis on 26 May in Stabroek News follows a similar analysis to Ramharack by attempting to discredit the observation report and displays her lack of understanding of how rigging took place on elections day, unstamped ballots, missing cold books, etc.

Baytoram’s last sentence, flies in the face of his arguments about a false narrative “Our hope at preserving our fragile democracy and arresting the slide towards ethnic domination lies with a consistent effort at exposing the fraud, pursuing political sanctions against ruling coalition leaders and encouraging the former “colonizers” to intervene to foster a brokered solution – one consistent with the election results.” The fact that fraud on elections day continues to be unearthed, goes completely unnoticed by this gentleman, who seems stuck in the past reliance on rigging prior 1992 and the ethnic numbers. What he fails to account for is the PPP’s dismissal of the electoral reforms between 1992 and 2015 when it was in government and had somewhat of a handle on the elections machinery. Failing to make those changes is a major indication of trying to subvert the electoral processes to manufacture a victory. Machinations by Gocol Boodhoo comes to mind. The main difference now is APNU-AFC is still a de facto government, and the PPP does not have full control of the elections machinery, and has resorted to other practices on elections day.

Another writer, Shamsun Mohamed, on 26 May in Stabroek News attempts to limit time for proving voter rigging on elections day. This suggests a rushed declaration to cover up something that is vile, wicked and cunning, and supports the PPP narrative of a rushed declaration after the recount. Surely, a recount was intended to unearth any skullduggery, and now that is has come to fold, why we are getting upset. Is it that some a worriedly afraid that truth lies in the APNU+AFC claims? It is historic and monumental that APNU-AFC is by default also putting its electoral count and reputation on the line by questioning the validity of elections day voting process. APNU+AFC even objected to their own voters in one region on the basis of them residing abroad.

The PPP driven media blasts and heightened coercion attempts particularly in the past two weeks coincidentally surfaces as APNU+AFC began unearthing irregularities. Rather than take time to analyses these allegations, the PPP through all its various leaders have overreached and tried to overwhelm the media with its false narrative to drown out the governing party’s allegations, rather than trying elicit the fairness of the process. Their thirst for power has left them with their half-slip showing, with no urge for a truly free and fair elections. The smaller parties, perhaps due to their novice background, have also not paused to think and consider, but have blindly continued along their merry way, perhaps upset with the electorate which almost completely ignored them.

Yours truly,
Krishna Persaud

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