A wider and thorough investigation

Oct 11, 2020 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – There was a conspiracy to rig the 2020 General and Regional Elections. This conspiracy emerged after the polls had closed and it was recognized that the APNU+AFC had lost the elections.
No one needs a crystal ball into the past to appreciate that. The attempt to rig the elections was done in a transparent manner and was exposed publicly.
The conspiracy involved persons within the Guyana Elections Commission. The conspiracy did not involve tampering with ballot but instead tampering with the results. It involved personnel employed by the Guyana Elections Commission.
Given the divisions within our society, the government should have sought international assistance to investigate the criminal aspects. It is not that the police do not have the capability; they do. However, this case for obvious reasons needs to be free of the charge of being partisan or political and this is why there should have been international investigators.
But perhaps the most persuasive reason why international assistance should be sought is the absolute necessity of ensuring that such a travesty never repeats itself again. The country was held hostage for five months while the most blatant disgraceful and shameless attempt to steal an election had to be contested in the courts.
Guyana was being pushed right back into the age of dictatorship. It would have become a pariah state with all the attendant consequences which the older generation were familiar with.
The rigging of the elections would have given license to other abuses. The rights of citizens would have become secondary to the dictates of the political directorate as it was between 1968 and 1992. The state would have done what it wanted to do with little recourse to remedies as things were between 1968 and 1972. Discrimination and favouritism would have become rampant; a party card would have been worth more than the national identification card and the economy was liable to be used as a personal slush fund of the political elites. But more importantly, the people’s right to choose a government of their choice would have ended.
This is the fate to which the Guyanese people would have been consigned by those who wanted to rig the elections. It would have marked a return to a backward political and economic era.
The conspiracy was intended to benefit the incumbent government and therefore had to have involved persons from within the APNU+AFC. GECOM officials would not have taken it upon themselves to rig an elections without the consent, approval and, most, likely the direction of persons within the political directorate.
The GECOM officials who were complicit in the attempt to rig the results of the elections were not acting independent of their political masters. They were part of a conspiracy and the political masterminds must equally be brought to justice.
The political architects behind the rigging – received support from elements within society who issued statements calling for actions which would have amounted to undermining democracy. These organizations also need to be investigated to determine whether their involvement constituted criminal misconduct.
The political masterminds behind the rigging of the elections are seeking to create confusion and unrest in Guyana for the sole purpose, it is believed, of deflecting attention and focus from their own involvement in the attempt to rig the elections. Those forces must not be allowed to escape prosecution. They should be brought under the radar of the investigation.
It is for this reason that it is necessary for an international team to be invited to investigate the criminal conspiracy to rig the elections. If such an international team is assembled, it will be impossible for any credence to be given to charges of a political witch-hunt.
Not that any such charge should be taken seriously. The world is not fooled, nor are the Guyanese people fooled as to what took place in this country during the attempt to steal an election.
It would be a travesty if those who so blatantly rigged the elections were to escape legal sanctions. This includes those persons within GECOM and their political masters – because there had to be political masters. All of them in the words of Arthur Kirkland in the movie, And Justice for All, should go “right to fu$#&ng jail.”
But this should not be the only sanctions for the high crimes which were committed against the people of this country between March and August of this year. Those complicit in the attempt at stealing the elections and those who condoned or supported their actions should face political consequences.
Travel sanctions were imposed by the Americans on those involved in undermining democracy. There must be a powerful and sustained lobby to make those sanctions permanent. And those countries which threatened but did not impose similar sanctions should be strenuously lobbied to do so. And this has to include neighbouring and Caribbean countries.
There is a need for a wider investigation to nab the political masterminds behind the rigging of the elections. If these masterminds escape legal and political sanctions, they will attempt their wickedness again.
All those involved in undermining democracy must face the consequences of their actions. As such, there must be a wider and thorough investigation into the conspiracy to rig the 2020 elections. And if persons in the Commission are found to be complicit, those persons too must go “right to fu$#&ng jail.”

(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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