At the event marking the 100th Birth Anniversary of Cheddi Jagan sponsored by the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre, former President Bharrat Jagdeo expressed fears that the general elections due in 2020 will be rigged. President Jagdeo cited the circumstances leading up to the appointment of the Chair of the Elections Commission, namely, President Granger’s rejection of three lists of a total of eighteen names, and the President’s choice of Justice James Patterson. President Granger had the authority to appoint a judge, former judge or person qualified to be a judge, if he rejected the list of the Leader of the Opposition on the ground that the names submitted were not acceptable to him. It was a controversial departure by the President from the formula adopted in 1992, which had subsequently received a constitutional imprimatur.
Rigged elections have had a long, known and sordid history in Guyana. Surprisingly, instead of leaving the past behind after the reforms of 1990-1992, it was the PNC that became the accuser, alleging that elections between 1992 and 2006 were rigged. Observers noted that the 40 per cent average it obtained from 1992 onwards, after the large majorities between 1968 and 1985 had to be explained. The rigging of the elections thereafter was the explanation, justifying the large majorities. But it might have been the symptom of the deeper ethnic malaise that afflicts Guyana, just as the PPP’s claims that the elections of 2011 and 2015, in which it received substantially less votes than before, were rigged against it.
Allegations of election rigging are never going to end in Guyana. This is not to say that there is not the ever-present danger that elections would be rigged. Suspicions against the PNCR, the real power in the APNU+AFC coalition, is never far below the surface because of its history of election rigging in the past. There is a belief that the electoral attraction of the AFC has totally collapsed and that the coalition cannot command more that the votes the PNC/PNCR would normally obtain at elections, namely, 42 per cent at maximum. It is believed that the PNC is aware of this possibility and therefore the suspicion has arisen of the likelihood of election rigging in 2020.
