Descent into the volcano

Mar 04, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – On this day, two years ago, the sign that the election was being rigged the day before (March 3) had now morphed into a national disaster. It is important that Guyanese remember what happened on this day, and the daily utterances of the lunatic fringe that are taking on right now.
In my Tuesday article I listed one of the members of the lunatic fringe whom I referred to as the Trumpian narcissist as shouting out loudly in a Facebook programme with “black pudding maan” recently that there was mass rigging on election day. The Trumpian narcissist quoted Keith Lowenfield, the then Chief Election Officer.
Rewind the tape to March 4, that is, the Wednesday. The same Lowenfield certified the tabulated votes for nine Regions. On that very Wednesday, there was absolutely no public statement from GECOM that the voting process in the nine Regions was tampered with.
What happened is what the entire world knows and will forever know – the results of the nine Regions gave the opposition a lead over the incumbent which meant that the election results had to be reshaped to give the incumbent a victory because when Region Four votes were tabulated it would not have changed the election results.
The years will pass but we must never forget what happened on Wednesday, March 4, so we must write about it on every anniversary. Mr. Mingo fell “sick” on this day in 2020 so the votes of Region Four could not be completed. A clerk was allowed to continue the tabulation.
Interestingly, it was not the Deputy Returning Officer that was mandated. The law provided for this. Instead it was a clerk which the law did not provide for. On this day on March 4, it had become clear to any decent mind that GECOM was complicit in tampering with the election.
On this day, two years ago, what has become known as the Statements of Poll (SOP) infamy was born. From that day, each one growing up in Guyana will know what a SOP is. Much to the amazement of the world, the clerk brought a spread sheet (SS) with the results, discontinuing the counting using the SOPs.
What unfolded subsequently was so shocking that the APNU+AFC could no longer remain in power because the world was watching. Let’s explain the SS business. Actually there is nothing wrong with the use of the SS because all it contains is the information on the SOPs.
This did not happen. The SSs had information which did not correspond to what the contestants and the observers had. Lenox Shuman, presidential candidate of the Liberty and Justice Party told the media that the SSs contained a number of discrepancies. Rhonda Lam, presidential candidate for the Citizens’ Initiative announced to the media that nine discrepancies were found on the SSs for the Linden-Soesdyke area.
Ms. Lam noted that the information on the SS did not match what she had. Important to note that all the disconnections between the SSs and SOPs favoured the APNU+AFC. I was in the studio of Kaieteur News reporting and commenting on what I was seeing. Guyana had returned to 1968, the year in which free and fair elections disappeared only to reappear 24 years later in 1992 before which time Guyana had become a dictatorship and a failed state under President Burnham.
It is important to recap the events of these days for two reasons. One is that it exposes the stupidities and asininities that are peddled by the lunatic fringe that the March 2 election was interfered with by the PPP. On that very date of March 4, Mr. Lowenfield admitted that there were discrepancies on the SSs and ordered a return to using the SOPs.
That took place later in the afternoon. On Wednesday evening when the tabulation for Region Four continued the general election for March 4 was almost over with no statement from Mr. Lowenfield that the voting and counting that went on from March 2 to March 3 was punctuated with fraud committed by the opposition.
Had the chairperson of GECOM ordered a continuous count of Region Four ballots, which was a mere 200, 000 papers, from Tuesday and accepted the results from that count, by Wednesday, the results would have been known, and Guyana would never have witnessed the active volcano that eventually calmed itself on July 31.
The second reason to keep Wednesday, March 4 alive forever is that it exposes the deep and extensive corrupted minds of so many organisations and so many individuals that we trusted before 2020. They told this nation they existed to ensure transparency, human rights, multi-racial harmony. That was an undiluted, depraved fiction.
(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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