I have been informed that this is the first time in Guyana’s post-independence electoral history – certainly the first time since the electoral reforms in the early 1990s – that elections have been called without the major parties having agreed upon the list of voters that is to be used on elections day or (even more concerning) agreed upon the process for arriving at such a list! As I understand it, the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) proposed the merging of the results from the recently aborted house-to-house (HtH) registration with the new claims and objections (C&O) results and the opposition position is that this would cause unacceptable confusion and lead to its worst nightmare: persons being illegally taken off the list.
Indeed, GECOM has wisely withdrawn an order that suggested that when the chairperson of the commission, in exchange for scrapping the ongoing HtH registration, promised a more extensive C&O period, she may have been contemplating not only a longer period but a change in the very nature of what is normally understood as C&O. But since our focus is on absurdities, the press statement of how the commission arrived at the number of days required to complete the C&O process is noteworthy. ‘Charles Corbin had suggested 49 days. My side was suggesting 21 then we removed to 28 and that is how the secretariat came to 35 because it was a compromise between the two [numbers]’ (Gunraj to press for sanctions for ‘dishonest’ registration verification move. SN: 30/09/2019). The new order has now moved the days to 42!
One would have thought that the number of days required for C&O could only have been scientifically derived if the parameters of that activity had been properly determined even if not agreed upon. If that was done, there should not have been over a 100% difference in the days proposed by the two sides, which has since yesterday been reduced to a 100% increase, or the apparent arbitrariness in arriving at the number of days. Indeed, if the work that is to be done was defined, how was it possible for the commission to gazette an order that, according to Commissioner Gunraj, had not even been considered and had to be withdrawn!
Where the dissolution of parliament is concerned, last week I argued that the government is neither unconstitutional nor illegal for it is operating under the mandate of the CCJ to negotiate an outcome and hold elections as early as possible bearing in mind what the constitution states. The CCJ set no dates or prioritised any date over the process of negotiations because it did not want to get into politics, and setting a date that is likely to favour one party in the context of an order to negotiate would have been only possible if the CCJ intended to be the final arbiter, i.e. get into politics! For the government to be illegal when carrying out a mandate set by the CCJ, the latter must also be illegal and that is absurd. 2 March 2020 is set as elections day and once, on any issue, the government operates in a timely manner it will in my opinion be operating legally. In any case, if the government is illegal let the offended party return to the CCJ for clarification/orders, otherwise we are in the realm of propaganda.
But all is possible in Guyana’s do or die politics, which does not allow space for compromise, and the essential reason we are in the present constitutional/legal quarrel results from one party’s effort to take persons off what it considers a ‘bloated’ electoral list packed with phantom voters by the previous PPP/C administration, and the latter’s determination that registered voters should not be removed from the list. If there is any doubt about the PPP/C motive, after the Chief Justice concluded that the court could not stop the HtH registration but that outside of a few legal categories, no one could be deregistered, the PPP/C was jubilant. It claimed victory, stating that its main reason for going to court on the HtH registration was to stop the GECOM from taking registered voters from off the list.
I have argued before in this column that stuffing the ballot boxes by adding false votes, facilitating multiple voting, etc. is one of the six main ways of rigging elections (SN: 10/07/ 2019), and, therefore, ensuring that a list is as clean as possible is important if elections manipulation is to be mitigated. What is absurd and suggestive of Guyana’s political dilemma is that after all the legal and political maneuverings, which have cost us millions of dollars, elections have been called and the main issue that gave rise to the problem – the quarrel over the electoral list – has not been solved. As suggested in the next paragraph, the political opportunism that leads ethnic entrepreneurial politicians to blame each other or proffer unsound solutions is unavoidable, but it is at the centre of the problem frustrating sensible efforts to find a solution.
‘Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. … the united public opinion necessary to the working of a representative government cannot exist. The influences which form opinions and decide political acts are different in the different sections of the country. An altogether different set of leaders have the confidence of one part of the country and of another.’ (John Stuart Mill 1861). Guyana is such a country and if Mill could have seen it 158 years ago, certainly we should be able to grasp this today and know that all the talk about developing a democratic culture/ethos within the present constitutional framework is nonsense. Cultures develop in practice and the political assumption under which we live must be adjusted to create appropriate structures within which people can politically co-operate and grow an appropriate cultural response.
The PPP/C and PNCR must be encouraged to understand that neither of them can alone make a nation of Guyana. The African people and their leaders, who have such a horrific perception of PPP/C’s rule, clearly believe that the PNCR winning power again will not be easy, and the establishment of a ministry of citizenship, the attempted redefinition of the criteria for those wanting to become chairperson of GECOM, the unilateral and legally flawed appointment of the chairperson, the present demand for a new HtH registration, the quarrel over the process to find an acceptable electoral list, etc., are all rooted in the determination to find means to retain power.
Guyana’s uniqueness leads to multiple absurdities: the opposition has claimed that the focus of its intention was to prevent the postponement of elections, yet the elections have been substantially postponed. The date of the next election has been fixed but the procedure for arriving at an electoral list acceptable to all, in respect of which the PPP/C has claimed victory, has not yet been agreed. We want virtuous politics in a context that breeds political wickedness! And even when the present costly battle is completed, the deep political cleavage will persist until an appropriate political solution is found.
