Riggers have no shame!

Aug 31, 2021 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

---

Kaieteur News – It is incomprehensible that those behind the rigging of the elections of March 2, 2020 could have believed that such conduct would have been tolerated in the 21st century. The international community and the pro-democratic forces in Guyana made it clear from the 5th March, 2020 that such conduct would not be acceptable and would be resisted.
The attempt was resisted and quelled. It took one decision from the State Department to make those who planned to benefit from the rigging realise that their actions would not be countenanced.
The riggers had anticipated that their shenanigans during the Recount would have found some traction. As such even after it became clear that they had been exposed, they insisted that CARICOM was the most credible interlocutor.
The hope was that CARICOM would have paved the way to deem the elections flawed and this allowed for some arrangement in which the riggers would hold on to political office. It did not go to plan because CARICOM was never going to be part of the attempt to undermine democracy in the 21st century.
The Report of the CARICOM Recount team indicated that though there were some defects, it did not find anything which would render the recount and by extension the casting of the ballot on March 2 so grievously deficient as to have thwarted the will of the people or the results from reflecting that will.
The expectations of the APNU+AFC were thus dashed. What they had hoped for did not materialise and the report of the team left them not only in a quandary but facing embarrassment and disgrace.
The team reported that the behaviour of some of the (APNU+AFC) party agents was totally unacceptable and not only cheapened the dignity of the recount exercise but it contributed immensely to the atmosphere of intimidation experienced by some of the GECOM staff.
The Report observed that “The numerous requests for information on serial numbers were so bizarre, that on one observed occasion an APNU+AFC agent was prepared to query serial numbers on the OLE in a work station where no one had voted. This was observed in Region Five, box 5157, where there was a single elector on the list, yet the APNU+AFC agent raised five serial numbers.” The team described much of these actions as a fishing expedition. It said that the “the net was cast extremely wide in the hope of at least making a small catch and at times the anticipated harvest ended in slim pickings.”
Having failed with its fishing expedition, the riggers set about to try to delay the inevitable declaration of the recount results. But this too floundered. This left the riggers deflated, and so for almost one year after the swearing-in of the new President the cheerleaders of the riggers buried their shame by remaining relatively silent.
But with time, shame tends to act less as a restraint. And what we are witnessing is a resurgence of the same shamelessness which characterised the attempt to rig the elections.
But this is the 21st century and the world has gone beyond riggers. Those who believed that they could turn back history and restore electoral rigging are living in some bubble which is not of the present era. The age of electoral rigging has passed and those who do not know that are living in a dream world of their own making.
But the shame has not been totally eradicated with the passage of time and so there is no attempt to try to blame members of the diplomatic community for the principled stance which was taken in response to the attempted rigging.
The Ambassador of the United States is being targeted and there have been calls from the disgraced losers for her to be removed. But like the shenanigans during the Recount, these calls will also be seen as another fishing expedition to see who can be made scapegoat to cover over the shame of the riggers.
It was a palpable miscalculation on the part of the masterminds of the rigging to believe that the international community would have fallen victim to their devious plot to sabotage electoral democracy. When that failed an attempt was made to claim that the Russians were behind the attempt. And this complaint was directed at the United States in the hope that it would receive some traction. A firm was even hired to lobby the US government.
How ironic therefore that now the very forces to which the riggers were appealing are now being blamed for the rigging. How pathetic it is now that the United States is being accused of being complicit in installing the PPP/C regime when all along the charges about Russian interference were being made in the hope that the United States would find some credibility in these unsubstantiated charges.
Riggers have no shame, not in their actions or their double standards.

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

---

---