A prominent thought, insistent fear, tortured environment

Aug 10, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall 

Kaieteur News- Rigging is in the air.  Warnings.  Fears.  Insistent and prominent.  Not about oil riggings.  But rigging of elections.  What does the environment indicate?

He who knows that the numbers aren’t there convincingly, sees the solution through rigging.  It is back to the 1960s.  The thinking and crying about rigging didn’t stop in 1992, or since.  In recent contests, claims of rigging have been a drumroll of sound.  Who did before, who just did.  The elections of 2020 saw the sprawling attempts at rigging in the brightest light.  Now that the even more consequential elections of 2025 are almost here, contentions about rigging rise and ripple energetically.  The last elections are still not mentally and emotionally settled, and this nation now prepares for the mother of all elections’ battles in less than three weeks.  Again, what does the environment project relative to claims and fears of rigging, sure to grow louder, sharper, in the few days left to the big day?

Decades long migration has squeezed Guyana’s ethnic mixture into tighter fractions.  I believe that the major ethnicities are so close they are almost inseparable.  Conservatively, with 5,000 Guyanese leaving annually, rounding down US State Department stats, Guyana has 60,000 less citizens than when the 2012 census occurred.  No one disagrees that the bulk of that exodus, probably three out of every four ‘green card departures, has come from the ruling PPP base.  It’s more than a dent.  Draining and damaging is where I stand.  The comfortable numerical cushion that the PPP enjoyed, long took for granted, has now flattened so much that it is as thin as a screen protector, and just as invisible.  What Forbes Burnham was forced to deal with, and managed in his unique manner, that is where the PPP of Bharrat Jagdeo now finds itself.

It’s the numbers, stupid!  C’mon, still want census results?  Do the arithmetic in the head, for crying out loud.  So, what’s a government to do, when such are the circumstances?  I remind Guyanese of Trinidad and Tobago’s Eric Williams slice of political wisdom: he who controls the election machinery would be a damn fool to end up second.  Not unexpectedly, the PNC has cried foul about 2020, and is already crying foul as the hours shorten to E-Day 2025, which could be Guyana’s Battle of Normandy.  The words read and heard are: ‘if the PPP thinks that rigging will be tolerated, then it has lost all thinking’.  It is less about elections integrity and more about those two sweet commodities -oil and money.  I’ll be satisfied with all three, i.e., elections integrity and oil and money.  But only on the fairest and foul-freest conditions.  What is the weather forecast?  What do sounds coming from the ground confirm?

Padded list opens the field for the incumbent PPP, leaves the PNC and company on the backfoot, and stuck at the non-striker’s end.  Score a boundary for the PPP.  Guyanese have heard and suspected the presence of a stealth Venezuelan contingent nicknamed the V4V Brigade.  For the uneducated and out-of-towners, that’s Venezuelan for Votes, and they just added mostly to the PPP side of the electoral scoresheet.  Let’s pick sense out of local elections mysteries through a one question quiz.  Who has the money?  And the jobs?  And the power to kick somebody straight back to Caracas?  I rest.  But not so fast, as there are two more pieces of unfinished business that must be factored into the looming Guyana’s elections.  One is legit and has been around long, and don’t ask me how or why.  The second is a tribute to the skillsets of the PPP.  The latter especially add some strength to PNC fears and warnings about the PPP’s range of preparations for elections rigging.

The legitimate factor is this 1-year eligibility standard for Commonwealth citizens.  How the hell have both the PPP and PNC presided over that, ah, that gaping void and did nothing to address?  A Guyanese living legally in the US for 100 years cannot vote if he or she isn’t a citizen.  But someone from any of the 55-member Commonwealth group can come here for a year and cast a ballot.  Can I do that in the UK or Mother India, Father Africa?  A flurry of safe singles helps the PPP to inch along, and all done cleanly.  I left the best factor for last, the highest return one.

Fellow Guyanese: need a national ID card?  Go to Freedom House and mention my name.  The only remaining issue is, how big is the PPP National ID card machinery?  No wonder the PNC is up in arms and talking about zero tolerance for rigging.  What would Guyanese elections be without rigging, now taken to an art form?  As the Manchu or Ming Chinese would say, interesting times are ahead.

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• Forbes Burnham, GHK Lall, Guyana, hard truths, oil riggings, PNC, PPP

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