The Granger administration had imagined that the world would stand by

Jul 12, 2020 Letters

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By now, the whole world has witnessed and rejected an overt, clumsy, brazen, barefaced attempt to thief the elections in Guyana. There is dismay, justifiably so, that 132 days later, the winner of the March 2 elections, the 9th President of Guyana, has not been sworn in, the winning party has not been able to form the new government, and the new parliament is still to be convened. So that it is clear, the PPP convincingly won these elections freely and fairly. Since 2015, it was the third overwhelming electoral win for Bharrat Jagdeo’s PPP. The PPP won more than 60% of the votes in the 2016 local government elections, more than 66% of the votes in the 2018 local government elections and now more than 51% of the March,2020 elections that had a dozen political parties contesting. Dr. Irfaan Ali is the 9th President of Guyana, even if the “truth hurts”. We knew these facts by early Tuesday, March 3 and it is, therefore, more than annoying that 132 days later, President Irfaan Ali has not been sworn in.
President Irfaan Ali has not been sworn in because David Granger’s rigging cabal is still determined to thief the elections. But the rigging cabal has discovered that thieving the elections has been more difficult than they imagined. Their gamble that the world would stand by quietly and permit electoral rigging in Guyana has backfired, backfired like a tsunami. Granger’s rigging cabal had anticipated that outside the PPP, everyone will give them a pass. They had banked on a myth – that the new political parties and civil society, including the private sector, hated the PPP more than they detest electoral rigging and dictatorship. They had gambled that the media in Guyana and the Caribbean would turn a blind eye to the rigging and dastardly manipulation of the results because they hated Bharrat Jagdeo and the PPP more. They had imagined a world in which CARICOM, the Commonwealth, the OAS, the ABCE countries, the international observers preferred Granger and his version of the PNC, even if they had to pretend they did not see any rigging. After all, the Commonwealth, CARICOM, the OAS, the ABCE countries stood by quietly, leaving the struggle up to Cheddi Jagan’s PPP during the Burnham and Hoyte dictatorships. Granger’s PNC even assumed that the international stakeholders would do the same for Granger’s PNC.
David Granger was never a hostage of the rigging cabal, he was the leader of the rigging cabal, all along: it became obvious since early 2018 that Granger was setting it up. His illegal appointment of James Patterson to chair GECOM was one of the signal acts that he and his version of the PNC was already deep in the planning for a rigged election. Thus, besides those in APNU+AFC who were the directors of the rigging machinery, there was the rigging arm in the Commission, with the three Commissioners and Lowenfield.
It was Lowenfield who permitted Clairmont Mingo to tamper with the Region 4 results. Hundreds of Statements of Poll from the March 2 counting of ballots were misrepresented by Mingo, allowing him to submit two Region 4 declarations on March 5 and March 13. On March 14, Lowenfield used the March 13 Mingo fraudulent declaration to submit a report to GECOM, with APNU+AFC illegally declared the winner of the March 2 elections. Since then, Lowenfield has submitted three more reports, all with different numbers. So the elections have had seven declarations, only two with the same numbers – the Statements of Poll results from March 2 and the Recount, both showing the PPP won with more than 233,000 votes. These were the only two declarations based on actual ballots. All the others were based on manipulations of bogus spreadsheets by Mingo and Lowenfield.
The Chair of GECOM has rescheduled the Saturday aborted meeting to Monday at 11.00 hours. This meeting will be legally reconstituted whether APNU+AFC commissioners choose to attend or not. Hopefully, the GECOM Chair will lead the commission to reject the fraudulent Lowenfield report. At this meeting, she has to censure Lowenfield, appoint another officer within GECOM to prepare the legal report, a report reflecting the true results. With the true results in hand, she should schedule a declaration meeting. While, APNU+AFC commissioners will likely boycott that meeting also, she can then reschedule that meeting for the next day, when she needs only three commissioners to legally declare the winner of the elections, in accordance with the laws of Guyana. It is not easy, but because it is the right thing, it is hard. The only way for Guyana to move forward with progress and prosperity is to travel on the road of democracy. After 132 days, enough is enough. This coming week, we must swear in Guyana’s 9th President – President Irfaan Ali.
Yours truly,
Dr. Leslie Ramsammy

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