Why was there an attempt to rig the elections?

Dec 28, 2020 Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News- The year 2020 will be remembered for the attempt to rig Guyana’s elections of 2nd March 2020. The Head of the Observer Mission of the Organization of American States (OAS) described the attempt as the most transparent attempt to alter the results of the elections he had ever seen.
The PNC had a notorious record of electoral rigging. It has tried to erase this image but its past came back to haunt it.
In elections prior to 1992, the PNC regime had reverted to seizing and stuffing the ballot boxes, padding the overseas voters list and concocting its own results. The rigging started in 1968. Peter D’Aguiar, a former ally of the PNC, and leader of the United Force declared “To call it an election is to give it a name it does not deserve; it was a seizure of power by fraud, not election.”
The 1973 elections were described as “fairy tale” elections. The British Parliamentary Group of Observers described the 1980 elections as “more crooked than barbed wire.” The most blatant and crudest of elections’ rigging took place in 1985 under Desmond Hoyte.
The 2020 elections witnessed two types of attempts to alter the results of the elections. The first was the insertion of fake results during the tabulation of the results for Region Four. This was not done under cover of darkness or behind a screen of secrecy; it was committed shamelessly in front of the eyes of the international diplomats and local and foreign observers. The second attempt was an attempt to arbitrarily invalidate votes which were already deemed as valid at the polling station and during the recount exercise.
The Guyanese people are observing eagerly at what is going to happen to those who were complicit in these acts. There can be no sympathy or mercy for those involved in such electoral malpractice and the agonies which the public had to endure for five months while all this tampering and pussyfooting with the results of the elections were taking place.
The pro-democracy forces should leave no stone unturned in ensuring that justice is meted out to those guilty of electoral fraud. They should also lobby strongly for the Biden/Harris administration in the United States to extend indefinitely the travel restrictions which were imposed on certain officials.
The APNU+AFC were the ones who would have benefitted had the attempt at rigging the elections succeeded. The APNU+AFC did nothing to disassociate itself from the electoral fraud, which was committed. In fact, it devised a narrative, which lent credence to that attempt. In some jurisdictions, there would have been demands for laws to be passed permanently banning these parties from ever again being part of the democratic process.
The APNU+AFC always had a Plan B. This plan B was being orchestrated from the moment the issue of the appointment of a Chairperson of GECOM arose after the 2015 elections. The APNU+AFC wanted someone it could rely upon.
This plan was further fine-tuned after legal action and pussyfooting neutralised the no-confidence motion, which had been passed in the National Assembly in December 2018. Plan B was implemented the moment the statements of polls showed that the PPP/C had won the 2020 elections.
The APNU+AFC believed that it could survive protests. It believed that if it did like what was done in Zimbabwe – where at one stage, there was a unity government – that it could remain in power.
The APNU+AFC Coalition was living in another stratosphere. It was stuck in the past, believing that it could assume power on the basis of flawed results.
The APNU+AFC miscalculated the resolve of the international community. This was why when the US Department of State announced travel sanctions; some persons immediately lost their appetite during a birthday celebration.
The APNU+AFC assumed that it could revert to certain sympathies to have Caricom table a report on the recount that would provide the Coalition government with the ammunition to discredit the elections. It assumed wrongly because the Caricom report delivered the coup-de-grâce. It accused the Coalition of going on a fishing expedition during the recount process.
But the attempt to rig the elections could only have taken place if those involved believed that the Guyana Elections Commission would have gone along with tainted results. Things did not work out as planned.
(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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Why was there an attempt to rig the elections?

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