The strangeness of Alexander’s synthesis of so many falsehoods is bizarre

Aug 09, 2025 Letters

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Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – I refer to commissioner Vincent Alexander’s letter ‘My view on GECOM`s preparedness for Elections 2025’ published in S/N’s edition of 8.8.’25.

The contents of the commissioner’s missive Is fundamentally flawed, if not misguided. The more the commissioner continues to heap scorn on GECOM and our electoral process the more people will have doubts about his erroneous assertions.

A small piece of advice to the commissioner:

In view of the fact that the Guyanese electorate have experienced an ‘Age of Enlightenment’ on the electoral front; It is advisable that the commissioner desists from manufacturing his own facts. Every decision adopted at the level of the commission is defensible by the Chairman, the CEO and DCEO.

That so much ink has been spilled parsing the commissioner’s claim about ‘lack of safeguards’ with the surreal is truly remarkable, they would leave anyone with a modicum of reasonableness dumbfounded.

As a representative of the political opposition at the commission, Mr Alexander’s claims are not only ritualistic, apparently, they have been etched onto the trunk of a weeping willow in memory of his dilemma for non-acceptance of real life and assimilation of incontestable facts.

Notwithstanding, the commissioner’s efforts at restyling himself ‘an independent commissioner,’ much of his anti-GECOM cynicism and theorizing, reflects ventriloquizing of the dominant views of the political opposition rather than his own.

His letters to the editors of mainstream media and social media outlets suggesting ‘rigged elections’ frequently invokes stereotypes of government-nominated commissioners to mock and portray their contributions as ‘irrelevant and obstructive.’ They are frequently accused of being persons who cannot ‘think for themselves’ nor ‘take independent positions’ that coincides with the opposition’s thus making the entire electoral process farcical.

It is with this in mind, that I take issue with the commissioner’s efforts at depicting our electoral procedures as flawed, that GECOM is ‘in disarray;’ unprepared to effectively and efficiently fulfill its constitutional mandate’ and that ‘GECOM will not be conducting a free, fair and transparent election.’

I do so simply because of the absolutely groundless and legally unsupported cringe-inducing demands of the political opposition intent on creating confusion amongst the more gullible enlisted within the ranks of the APNU and garrisoned at Sophia.

Unlike Mr. Alexander I felt ‘the compulsion or more so the obligation,’ on more than one occasion, as a government-appointed commissioner and equally so, as a constitutional officer responsible to the electorate and the citizenry at large’, not to report about GECOM’s unpreparedness; but to expose the falsehoods about ‘ongoing chicanery; erection of administrative barriers; acts of deception or omissions; and what he described as ‘erroneously articulated secrecy of the vote.’

The three opposition- sponsored commissioner’s anti-GECOM narrative, lack of appreciation and passive aggression adopted at statutory meetings of the commission, flies in the face of consistent efforts by the secretariat and senior managers at GECOM who strive to do their level-best to bring-off a smooth and successful election on September first.

I have deducted my efforts to counter the political opposition’s accusations of electoral rigging; a bloated voters list; voting by the deceased and non-residents; the right of prisoners to vote; and the call for biometrics, by revealing the positive and legal side of government’s reforms of the Representation of the People Act and GECOM’S legal and time bound decisions.

Amid these efforts, the political opposition has persistently refused to support and to embrace the announced reforms in preference to holding up the tattered banner of defeat having lost the election in 2020 and now trying to make a political come-back at a time when their electoral rap-sheet remains drenched in shame and lacking one iota of remorse.

I must concede, that I have never been able to read to the end, any of Alexander’s missives simply because the contents are so predictable and repetitive that from fifty consecutive lines, would I not encounter cheap propaganda, winning him as a representative of the political opposition, a kind of reputation…I always smelled desecration and repugnance.
As the political opposition continues its crusade to convince readers that acceptance of their version, that the state of affairs at GECOM is at a dead end; truth be told, I believe the Guyanese electorate have a vision for the future characterized by hope and optimism and that the only path forward lay in accepting that government’s commitments this time around will again see promises delivered.

Yours faithfully,
Clement J. Rohee
GECOM Commissioner

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• Clement J. Rohee, Elections, falsehoods, GECOM, Vincent Alexander

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