The missing link in the PNC’s dialogue with Ms. Feinstein

Mar 28, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – Ms. Barbara Feinstein from the US Department of State came to Guyana and had dialogue with the PNC. Mr. Aubrey Norton, the PNC leader was once a foreign service officer. He knows how embassies work and the role that is expected of diplomatic missions of the governments they serve.
One such role is to transmit analyses to the home government. A simple hypothetical example should suffice. Let’s say Argentine’s deputy foreign minister is coming to Guyana. The Argentine Embassy in Georgetown will inform the minister that he should not visit Zanadu village because the captain of the Guyana football team comes from the village and the folks there are still hostile to Argentina over a controversial World Cup match that Guyana lost to Argentina.
When Ms. Feinsten, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, chose to come to Guyana, she would have read a US Embassy brief on Guyana that included the 2020 election drama. Ms. Feinstein would have had her staff research the election credibility of Guyana which those staff members would have been guided on from the US Embassy. That is the kind of work embassies do.
There is not even a modicum of evidence that any government in the world, any major international institution believes that the Guyana Government was not properly elected. Since August 2, 2020 with the legal acceptance of a new president, the PNC leader, their surrogates, the lunatic fringe, among others, have used the word, “installed” to describe the PPP government.
The flesh and bones of this contention is that the US was the vehicle through which the PPP was allowed to secure power. From August 2020, these sectors have not explained to the Guyanese people two crucial factors that they have a moral duty to do. Why did the US prefer a PPP administration over the incumbent? And secondly, what logistical methods were employed to facilitate power?
Guyana remains one of the most intriguing nations even though it is not a known country in the world, comparatively speaking. If the US installed the PPP into power then the US Department of State would have been the key ministry in the US government tasked with that operation.
In that mission, the key official would be the Assistant Secretary of State for Caribbean Affairs. That is what Ms. Feinstein is. Now why would the US plan an operation to remove the APNU+AFC government and the discussion excludes the State Department’s point person for the Caribbean?
Did the PNC delegation raise the issue with Ms. Feinstein? I don’t know if they did because the PNC has not informed the nation if they did. But if they did or did not, they have a strong moral obligation to inform their supporters. It is going on to two years since the election and the PNC have continued to emphasis the “install” theory.
So why not take it a step further and explain to your supporters that the controversy was put on the agenda in the dialogue with Ms. Feinstein? If it was not, then explain why. But the PNC must explain it to their supporters. It is called moral obligation. In meeting with Ms. Feinstein, the PNC has further committed itself to electoral democracy.
There has not been even one member of the hierarchy of the PNC since August 2020 that has even remotely hinted that the PNC is no longer interested in national elections. On the contrary, several PNC leaders have openly expressed the feeling that they are hoping to win the 2025 battle.
Here is where the PNC will hasten its self-destruction. If you contest elections, then you cannot go on crying that you were cheated on every occasion. And on every occasion the world rejects your exclamations. The 2025 electoral landscape will be scientifically impossible for any plotter to rig.
Given what happened from March to July in 2020, every loophole that contains the possibility of fraud will be graphically extirpated. The election in 2025 may be one of the world’s most transparent battles. The PNC has two years and a few months to request the mechanisms that are necessary for a tamper-free poll. If those tight arrangements are secured then the PNC has to and must accept the results.
Analysts inside and outside of Guyana will predict their winner but what must not be contentious is the results if the process was transparent. How could the 2025 poll not be a virtual show for the whole world to see after what happened in 2020? In 2025, the loser must face reality and do the decent thing.

(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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