The GHRA lacks credibility

Mar 20, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) has long faced a credibility crisis. But its trustworthiness, reliability and consistency were fatally eroded by its failure to condemn the attempted rigging of the 2020 elections.
During the five month impasse between 2nd March, 2020 and 2nd August, 2020, there was a diabolical plot to steal the election. The GHRA and many other civil society organisations did not come out and condemn the attempt to pervert the Region Four results.
The attempt to rig the 2020 general and regional elections was widely condemned both within the Caribbean and locally. Yet, the GHRA failed to condemn the gravest threat to human rights since the rigging of the 1968 elections.
Guyana was on the brink of a return to the dark days of democracy. Dictatorship was on the country’s doorstep.
The GHRA is only too aware of the dangers that dictatorship poses to human rights. The GHRA is well aware that the worst human rights abuses in Guyana took place under the dictatorship. For example, the United States Department of State Human Rights Report on Guyana for 1983 stated, “The Burnham Government has harassed the opposition and kept it weak, fragmented and ineffective by arrests, police searches and other legal procedures.”
According to the Report the government’s human rights record for 1983 did not show an improvement. It pointed out that major areas of concern were police harassment and misconduct and the use of the security forces for political control, and infringement of freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. It went on to note that beatings by the police to elicit confessions were not uncommon and it pointed to abuses such as arbitrary arrests of members of the political opposition.
The GHRA was not oblivious to the fact that these excesses which had their origins in political dictatorship. Indeed, the GHRA clearly understood the importance of defending free and fair elections.
In 1980, it was reported to have sponsored a group of international persons to observe the elections of that year. The team issued a statement after the elections in which it said described it as a most ‘blatant fraud”. The team concluded that on the basis of abundant evidence that the elections were flagrantly and massively rigged.
The GHRA continued to be involved in denouncing electoral fraud. It co-signed a statement with a number of other organisations in 1985 which expressed concern about the conduct of the 1985 elections. The statement observed that the elections were characterised by the “familiar and sordid catalogue of widespread disenfranchisement, multiple voting, ejection of polling agents, threats, intimidation, violence and collusion by police and army personnel…” The statement concluded that these events attested to the PNC’s attempt to retain power and the ends to which it would go to do so.
The GHRA therefore has no excuse whatsoever for not condemning the attempt to rig the 2020 general and regional elections. Merely calling for the head of GECOM to bring an end to the elections impasse obscures the breach of the right of people to elect their government.
If the GHRA wishes to be taken seriously ever again, it owes the public an explanation for its failure to condemn the attempt at rigging the elections. The organisation had merely confessed that it remained silent during the first month following the elections but has since stepped out.
The GHRA did not go into hibernation during the period of the APNU+AFC government. The organisation had condemned the unilateral manner of appointment of Justice James Patterson as Chairman of GECOM. But it clearly was not operating with the same degree of vibrancy as it had in the past. However, since August 2020, it has become reinvigorated. This has justly exposed the GHRA of accusations of being selective in condemnations.
A long-standing criticism of the GHRA concerns its internal workings. As an organisation which has to expose and condemn abuses of human rights, the GHRA would be expected to demonstrate greater accountability. Yet, very little information is provided by the GHRA about its membership, leadership and its financing even though it says that this information is in the public domain.
The failure of the GHRA to condemn the attempted rigging of the 2020 elections may have been its Waterloo. The GHRA has emerged from that episode with a serious credibility deficit. It is not going to be taken seriously given its inconsistency and opacity.
The GHRA should either come clean about its sins or stay clear of condemning abuses by the government. Its affairs are not in order.
(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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