The turning point: A psychological analysis of Guyana’s failed putsch

Apr 23, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – From now, way into the future, the March 2020 rigged election will be remembered and discussed. Some dimensions will be the center of attention, but over time will become banal. These dimensions will center on Claudette Singh, Clairmont Mingo, Keith Lowenfield, GECOM Secretariat and David Granger as the key players.
Missing for years and years to come are some deeply complex aspects of the March 2020 disaster. Should the historian and social scientist write about it in the foreseeable future and omit crucial, invisible complexities of the five month Faustian journey, it is hoped this column is a tiny contribution to focusing on some illumination on these hidden dimensions.
Why was the PNC not successful in staying in power? The answer lies in the psychology of Claudette Singh. There is nothing from March 4 when Mingo began inventing numbers that the researcher could find to make people think that the PNC did not want to hold on to power. Everything was planned to rig and cling to power hoping future negotiations with the PPP as demanded by powerful CARICOM and Western government would not cancel the tenure of the APNU+AFC.
So why the PNC could not have held on to power even though the police force was prepared to assist? Before we begin the psychological analysis, a quick reference should be made to one of the great mysteries in human thinking. At the height of Nazi Germany’s successful conquest of Europe, Hitler’s deputy flew a plane, landed it in enemy territory, Britain; was captured and jailed until he died in solitary confinement decades after.
Why did Rudolph Hess do such an inscrutable thing? People’s psychology is never fixed. It was Freud who wrote that we should not refer to human nature because each human has a different cluster of factors that make up what we call human nature. A person’s psychology undergoes transformation depending on the circumstances that person is surrounded by. The PNC could not have held on to power because the key person it entrusted to pave the way for the putsch had a psychological metamorphosis – Claudette Singh.
There is no question in my mind that Singh had agreed to accept GECOM’s fraudulent figures of an APNU+AFC victory on Thursday, March 6. All the bureaucratic procedures were in place for a GECOM declaration the next day. But the situations kept changing rapidly putting enormous strain on the psychology of Singh and David Granger.
The beginning of Singh’s mental strain was on the very Thursday when the PPP got three injunctions to stop GECOM’s acceptance of Mingo’s fictional numbers. Here is where Singh and Granger began to feel the mental pressure. The PNC thought that Singh would have gone ahead and still declare the results because there was a plan to get Singh and Lowenfield to hide thus avoiding being served.
But even though Singh was not served, she still accepted to halt an official GECOM proclamation giving APNU+AFC a victory. Why did she do that? One factor explains it. Singh felt compelled by her personal history to observe the High Court ruling because she was a High Court and Court of Appeal judge. These things influence people’s psychology. In her mind she felt the judicial system was close to her heart and she should respect it.
But just as Singh was feeling mental strain so was Granger. When Singh accepted the three injunctions, the PNC became confused. They had to wait for another opportunity to get Singh to help them. Friday, March 10 was the beginning of the psychological breakdown of both Singh and Granger and a breakdown in the relationship between Granger and Singh.
Granger got desperate and decided to close shop by getting Mingo to do on Friday, March 10 at GECOM head office in Kingston, a repeat of what he did the week before at GECOM’s command centre. The idea was to do a Burnham on the Chief Justice. When the constitution required Burnham to do something, he would do it in his own twisted, illogical way and declare – “I complied with the constitution and the laws.”
So Mingo was instructed to do his repetition and GECOM would say that he complied with the injunctions. It meant that on Saturday, March 11, Granger was to be sworn in. But by this time, Singh had become a different lady. She did not call a GECOM meeting to declare the crooked results.
Singh nor the PNC envisaged the unforeseen circumstances that would envelope them on Thursday, March 5. The plan was for GECOM to use fictional figures after Mingo did his Region Four skullduggery and declare the results. But the three injunctions had hit Singh hard. To be continued.

(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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