A few columns ago I set myself the task of combining historical facts with personal reflections to support a hypothesis that a ‘significant shift has taken place in the global political system that threatens the PNC’s take no prisoners approach to acquiring and holding on to political power!’ (SN: 15/01/2020). I argued that even stalwart PNC members now agree that the party blatantly manipulated the national elections between1968 and 1992 and I opined that maybe it is still in that business if the PPP is correct that the 2015 elections were rigged. Last week I concluded that with a diminishing ethnic support base, it is quite possible that the PPP/C deliberately set out to construct and sustain a flawed voters’ register and that politically Guyana has become a rigging field for both the PNC and the PPP.
The significant shift I detected began in Kenya where the Supreme Court annulled the August 2017 re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta although it was widely underwritten by the more important election observer missions. Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who headed the Carter Center mission, claimed that the country’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission had put in place a transparent process for voting, counting, reporting, and securing the vote. The African Union delegation thought that the elections commission had acted satisfactorily and the European Union delegation called upon the losers to accept defeat as a natural part of a competitive democratic process.
The sharpest criticism of the international observers came from Kenya’s opposition presidential candidate Raila Odinga, who said they had sanitized electoral fraud, before the court found that the elections commission had ‘committed irregularities and illegalities in the transmission of results that affected the integrity of the poll’ and so ordered that the elections be annulled and another held within 60 days.
Others have since argued that there is urgent need to review the process of appointing international observers, rejecting those with a history of elections fiddling and with obvious geopolitical and partisan interests. Missions are usually too small and short term and lack technical capabilities. Observers with their mantra that the illegalities and irregularities identified are insufficient to have altered the results of the elections have been too dismissive of local criticisms. The Kenya decision and the criticisms that followed rocked the credibility of elections observer missions and gave rise to a lot of soul searching.
The Kenyan court took more of a process approach: it did not focus on possible changes in results but upon the fact that there were illegalities and irregularities that made it impossible to certify the polls. And not so long ago, President Evo Morales of Bolivia demitted office after the Organisation of American States (OAS) found that during the electoral process there were some three dozen deliberate actions that sought to manipulate the results of the elections and that thus the results could not be certified (http://www.oas.org/fpdb/press/Audit-Report-EN-vFINAL.pdf). Yet if others are to be believed no approach seems able to escape geopolitical skullduggery. ‘The OAS audit identifies irregularities and vulnerabilities, many of which impact elections across the hemisphere — and the world — but then concludes that they amount to the “deliberate” manipulation of electoral results. …. there is no clear evidence that the results of the election were systematically altered or manipulated.’ (https://www.issuelab.org/resources/ 35850/35850.pdf).
Given Guyana’s tradition of ethnic voting, the numerical strength of the parties and Guyana’s constitution that gives the government to the party that wins the plurality, this evolving environment that requires that observer missions be more thorough, long-term and focus more on procedural and technical violations is likely to be applauded by those who demand free and fair elections. However, particularly now that its coalition partner the AFC appears to be in free fall, it cannot play well with the PNC’s traditional method of taking government.
But perhaps all may not be lost for the coalition regime. ‘The most obvious incentive for world powers to approve poor-quality polls is to maintain good relations with the government in order to access resources and pursue their geostrategic ambitions. In this sense, a state’s resource wealth and location play an important role in shaping whether the costs of rigging can be reduced’ (Cheeseman Nicholas and Brian Klaas (2018) How to Rig an Election. Yale University Press).
Again, take the story of Azerbaijan’s 2013 elections, where the repressive regime of President Ilham Aliyev, trying to boost its democratic credentials, launched an iPhone app that was to give citizens a real time view of the ballot counting process but inadvertently showed the results the day before the elections began. Confronted by this reality, US Congressman Michael McMahon, a New York Democrat and a member of the congressional observer delegation still found it possible to claim that the election was ‘honest, fair, and really efficient’. He was not alone: the delegations from the Council of Europe and the European Parliament claimed that, ‘Overall around Election Day we have observed a free, fair and transparent electoral process … From what we have seen, electoral procedures on the eve and on Election Day have been carried out in a professional and peaceful way.’ I need only mention that Azerbaijan lies squarely in the energy-rich Caspian region and is vital to European oil and gas supplies. As such, it is strategically important because it acts as a counterweight to Europe’s increasing dependence on Russian energy resources. ‘From George W. Bush to Barack Obama, American foreign policy invested heavily in the Caspian basin as a means of undercutting Russian leverage across Europe. … In short, Azerbaijan got a free pass in part because Western countries prioritized their strategic relationship with the regime over their commitment to democratic principles.’ (Ibid).
A very good case could be made that in modern Guyanese history, who the West wanted to rule ruled, and Guyana has been a classic case in which democracy has been sacrificed on the altar of more important western goals. The PNC remained in office for nearly three decades and the PPP/C came to government in 1992 with the support of the West. Indeed, the PPP/C’s loss of Western support by 2015 contributed significantly to its loss of government. Make no mistake: the PPP/C contributed in no small amount to its own demise. It failed to properly manage Guyana’s ethnic context and this resulted in economic stagnation. Political propagandists aside, the average economic growth rate, which was 7.2% 1993 to 1997 – the first full five years of PPP/C rule – became 0.50% in the first full five years – 2001 to 2005 – of Bharrat Jagdeo’s presidency. (World Development Indicators).
This disastrous decline occurred amid the PPP/C’s growing autocratic behaviour intended to quell internal ethnic dissent and sent the regime scurrying in every direction – associations with funny money and cozying up to the Chinese and Russians – in search of development finance. The PPP/C appeared to have forgotten where Guyana is geographically located and became so full of itself it orchestrated a feral blast in the home of the West! Indeed, have you recently heard anything significantly different from the PPP/C to indicate that it will better manage its ethnic context or protect Western hemispheric interests? Whom the Gods want to destroy they first make mad!
The APNU+AFC government has unwittingly already given away much of our heritage and its full page advertisement in last Sunday’s newspapers in support of its deal with ExxonMobil suggests that it understands that free and fair elections have never been the only consideration of world powers and that it needs to present itself to the West as the better alternative government in Guyana. Full circle: once again PNC rule requires that Guyana’s national interest find accommodation within the geostrategic interests of the West.
