Talking through both sides of one’s mouth

Jul 02, 2020 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

It does not require a formal declaration of the elections’ results for any of the Presidential candidates to concede defeat. In fact, the very concept of conceding presupposes that the candidate conceding has recognized that the results of the elections are not likely to end in his or her favour.
In November 2016, Donald Trump won the American election. On the very night of the election, his opposite number, Hilary Clinton, called him to offer her congratulation. She publicly conceded defeat the next day. She did not wait on a formal declaration.
She told her supporters “This is painful and it will be for a long time,” she said, “but I want you to remember this, our campaign was never about one person or even one election. It was about the country we love.”
Last December, Jeremy Corbyn the United Kingdom’s Labour Party realized that he had lost the elections to Boris Johnson. He immediately conceded defeat and, later, he resigned as leader of his party. He too did not wait on the formal announcement of the elections
Frendual Stuart lost the election in Barbados to Mia Mottley in May 2018. He did not wait on the official declaration; he immediately conceded and accepted full responsibility for his party’s loss.
There is therefore no mandatory requirement for a formal declaration to be made before conceding defeat. It is considered the honourable thing to concede when a candidate realizes that he or she has lost an election.
Guyana would not have been in its present predicament if those who lost the 2020 General and regional elections had acted honourably and conceded that they had lost. A formal declaration was not necessary to determine who had won and who had lost. The two main parties would have known the outcome by the following day based on their Statements of Poll.
The President of Guyana has signed an agreement, brokered by the Caribbean Community, agreeing to respect the results of the Recount of the ballots cast in the elections of 2nd March. It was President Granger who invited the Caribbean Community to scrutinize the Recount of the ballots. The President and the Leader of the Opposition agreed “To abide by the outcome of a fair and transparent process for the recount.”
The Caricom Team which came to scrutinize the process has certified the process as being fair and transparent. The Team pronounced that the Recount was transparent. President Granger is therefore bound to abide by the results of the Recount.
Those Results are known. The Chief Elections Officer has submitted the matrices of the results of the Recount to the Guyana Elections Commission. In calculating the allocation of seats, however, the CEO engaged in creative mathematics by invalidating more than 115,000 of the valid and certified votes.
The President is on record as saying that he accepts the Report of the Chief Elections Officer. But which report? The one that gave the actual recount results or the contorted report which disenfranchised one on every four electors who cast their ballots?
The President cannot eat his cake and have it too. If he has committed to abide by the results of the Recount he cannot at the same time be accepting fraudulent numbers. If he accepts the latter, then he is saying that his Coalition has won the elections and therefore he is nullifying the results of the Recount which he agreed to abide by.
While it is true that the President has not claimed victory, his acceptance of a flawed Report implies that he has accepted the numbers which gives his party a one-seat majority, and by extension rejects the results of the Recount. The Caricom Report has indicated that the results of the Recount can be accepted as the will of the electorate.
The President is not required by law to concede. There is no obligation on him to do so. But given the shameless and dishonest attempts which have been made to steal the elections, conceding would have put distance between him and those who are part of a grand but hopelessly incompetent conspiracy at electoral banditry.

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

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Talking through both sides of one’s mouth

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