Winning fairly and squarely

May 02, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – When the news broke that the 1997 elections had been vitiated there was an eruption of excitement among some PNCR supporters working in a particular private sector entity. They were euphoric until the grounds for the vitiation were explained to them.

When they were told the grounds for vitiation, one of them, echoing the sentiments of the others, said “We don’t want to win like that. We do not want to win on technicalities.”

Those ordinary PNC supporters were saying was that it mattered how you win. They wanted to win on fairly and squarely, not on legal technicalities. If the court had found that the evidence established irregularities on a scale to overturn the results of the elections, that may have satisfied those ordinary supporters of the PNC. But while the court did find irregularities, it could not pronounce on whether this would have altered the overall results. Instead, the court vitiated the elections on a legal technicality – the use of the national voter identification card was unconstitutional.

There is considerable merit, I believe, in the proposition that had that decision gone to the Appeal Court (Guyana had not yet acceded to the appellate jurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Justice), it would have been overturned. It is difficult to understand how an election can be vitiated on the grounds of the use of a national voter identification card which had not been objected to prior to the elections but which was objected to during the hearing of the petition, and especially since it was never established that sufficient numbers were disenfranchised by the measure to the extent that it had the potential to overturn the almost 60,000 votes by which Janet Jagan trounced Desmond Hoyte.

It is one thing to establish that the use of the voter identification card was unconstitutional. It is another thing to vitiate elections results on the basis of the use of that card.

It was the same thing in relation to the 2020 general and regional elections. As a Commission of Inquiry into those elections recently pronounced, there was an attempt to foist false results on the people. Any victory arising from such an exercise would be a pyrrhic. There is no glory nor even consolation, in winning an election on dubious grounds.

The loser of a cricket match does not wish to be declared the winner because the scorer was not supposed to be wearing a short which was the same colour as the winning team. Unless it can be established that the scorer rigged the scorecard, no losing team would find any decision to overturn the match result worthwhile if that decision was based on a technicality.

After the last World Cup, there were French supporters who were calling for a replay of the final on the grounds that when Argentina’s third goal was scored, there were persons from the Argentine bench encroaching onto the pitch.

But even the most ardent of French football fans did not take seriously the demand for a replay. They did not want to win on such technical grounds. They accepted defeat.

Following the 2020 general and regional elections, the Opposition initially said that its statements of poll would prove that it had won the elections. The narrative exploded in the face of the Opposition when David Granger agreed to a Recount. The narrative then switched to the fanciful claims that dead and migrant persons voted. A CARICOM Audit team found that the majority of the objections made by the Opposition scrutinizers during the recount process amounted to a “fishing expedition”.

Yet, the narratives continued and then morphed into the government being “installed” (suggesting imposed) by US imperialism. Well, during the Congress of the PNCR, it was clearly announced that the winner of the election for leader was eligible to be “installed” as leader. There was no objection then to the use of the word “installed”.

The resort of legal technicalities to upturn the results of an election does not overturn in the minds of citizens the view that those who win should win in accordance with the ground rules – that is they should win based on the votes they received and not because of some legal technicality.

The courts have always held that even where there are irregularities, these must be on a scale sufficient to have impacted on the overall result of the election. If a party wins and election by 60,000 votes, one does not expect that those results are going to be overturned simply because at one polling station someone voted without any form of identification. One vote would not alter the overall outcome. Those supporters of the PNC who were initially elated when they heard that the 1997 elections were vitiated but whose excitement was extinguished when they later learnt of the grounds for the vitiation of the results, were expressing a sentiment that most people embrace: if you have to win, win fairly and squarely not on the basis of technicalities.

(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.)