Bio-metrics is not the answer!

Jan 10, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – Why change something that does not need fixing? Why fiddle with something which has worked relatively well and to the satisfaction of all parties?

After close of polls of the March 2020 elections, all of the contestants agreed that polling went well. The PPPC described polling as having gone smoothly. The APNU+AFC’s Presidential Candidate David Granger said that he was satisfied despite some anomalies such as the problem experienced in some areas with the six-digit stamp. And the Chairman of GECOM surmised that the Commission had delivered free, fair and credible elections.

It was only after it became clear that the APNU+AFC did not win the elections that the problems started. The attempt at rigging was a post- Election Day affair and therefore did not and could not impugn the integrity of the processes on Election Day. This has been the pattern since 1997. In that year’s elections, some of the runners who were supposed to collect the Statements of Polls for tabulation at GECOM ran off with Statement of Polls to Congress Place rather than to GECOM headquarters. And this opened the floodgates to manufactured claims that the elections results were being rigged. The controversy even then was a post-Election Day affair.

In March 2020, there was an attempt to manipulate the tabulation of the results of District Four. In order to resolve this, agreement was reached for a Recount. And this immediately caused a shift in narrative. to there being voter impersonation and fraud on Election Day. There was another later attempt to disenfranchise more than 100,000 voters whose votes had been counted and certified as valid at the places of poll.

The chances of voter fraud at polling stations are extremely remote given the checks and balances in place. The two main political parties had polling agents at almost all polling stations. Voter impersonation and massive fraud could not have happened without the direct complicity of those party polling agents. It is therefore just a feeble excuse and an attempt to cast greater suspicion on the electoral system for it to be claimed that voter impersonation took place right under the noses of the parties’ polling agents.

The problems with Guyana’s electoral system have little to do with polling day arrangements. The problems are created by those who are unwilling to accept the democratic will of the people. Demanding greater use of bio-metrics will not remove the suspicion over election results. It will increase it. It will complicate polling, increase disenfranchisement and fuel all kinds of new conspiracy theories. Demanding greater use of bio-metrics will only delay elections and will help to sustain the impression that the polling day arrangements need fixing because they are flawed and vulnerable to fraud. This will erode confidence in the work of the Commission rather than enhance public confidence in its work.

In any event, no consensus will be found about greater use of bio-metrics. The two main political parties in Guyana can hardly agree on the use of voting machines – a proposal of which has long been on the table from Canada – much less to agree to greater use of bio-metrics. Voting machines will allow for the faster declaration of preliminary results but the parties will never agree to this because the next thing you will hear is that the voting machines were rigging the elections in favor of the PPPC. And what is to prevent someone from challenging the constitutionality of the use of more bio-metrics. The PNCR had agreed to the use of a voter identification card in the 1997 elections. But after it lost those elections, it challenged the constitutionality of the use of the voter identification card, the very measure which it supported.

The bottom line is that electoral losers are sour. The PNCR has always sought to find a reason to dispute elections. And the PPPC, which lost the 2015 general and regional elections, also complained about post-Election Day manipulation. Biometrics is not the answer because it does not address the core problem of losers being unwilling to accept their electoral defeat. It is therefore no use trying to dispense with a system that has worked and worked well on polling day. The source of the suspicion over the country’s electoral system boils down to the failure of the losers to accept their defeat, Until and unless election losers can stand up and “take their licks like a man”, no amount of tinkering with polling day arrangements will resolve anything.

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