“When will you make an end?” an impatient Pope Julius II calls up to Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the 1965 film The Agony and the Ecstasy. “When I am finished,” comes down the now famous reply. One is reminded of this exchange as the Gecom saga drags on interminably with no immediate end in sight. How is it that a straightforward counting exercise in a single electoral district of this country could be perverted to prevent the declaration of a result six weeks after an election has been held?
What has happened is an entirely new species of coup d’êtat, involving not direct physical violence, but a strategy of delay without end, utilising a series of stratagems in conjunction with meretricious appeals to the courts. And this in a situation where the electoral fraud was both blatant and public. Perhaps Guyana can add a new word to the international political lexicon, such as the Gecom manoeuvre, or maybe even the Granger manoeuvre. That said, what has happened has been made possible by the corruption of certain members of the Gecom Secretariat, the flawed structure of the commission itself, and a very weak commission Chair. It should be emphasised that the actual decisions handed down by the courts have not been responsible for the delays as such.
In these Covid-19 times, among other reasons, it is essential that this endless process sees some kind of quick resolution. As we argued in our Monday editorial, it would be best if Gecom agreed to a recount of the Region Four results alone, although the commission had the authority to extend this to any other region if there were some good reason. The Chair had in any case given a commitment to the Chief Justice in court for a recount of Region Four.
This is also the position of the Private Sector Commission, which has deemed the recount of all votes cast on March 2 as “an entire waste of time and wholly unnecessary.” It was only in District Four, they said in a statement, that the declaration of the results by Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo was “clearly fraudulent” and had “no credibility.”
While that would indeed be the fastest route to an exit strategy for the current impasse, Gecom has decided on a total recount, the coronavirus circumstances notwithstanding. Presumably the opposition commissioners were of the view that since President David Granger and Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo were in accord on a total recount in their aide memoire, it would only hold up things further if they were then in meetings to raise the matter of a limited exercise in relation to District Four alone.
But then along comes Mr Lowenfield with his 156-day proposal for a recount. While the limited number of workstations stipulated by the commission itself was partly responsible for this unbelievable time-frame, there were other factors too which accounted for it, such as the two hours he allotted for the counting of each ballot box. In a letter to this newspaper last week, Mr Peter Fraser calculated that on that basis it would take 545 years to count the Indian elections, 123 years for the 2016 US presidential election and 27 years for the UK national poll. The very least that can be said is that the CEO’s proposal was ludicrous − not, mind you, that preposterousness has ever operated as an inhibiting factor to some members of the Secretariat before.
The longer the procrastination artists delay with a view to setting up an illegal installation of the president, the closer they come to placing Guyana in serious economic jeopardy. As we reported in our online edition yesterday (the full printed version of the interview with Georgetown Chamber of Commerce President on which it is based will appear in a forthcoming edition of the Guyana Review), Mr Nicholas Deygoo-Boyer conveyed the concerns of the Chamber that if a presidential candidate is sworn in on the basis of flawed election results, that government would not be recognised by the international community. Since our economic and social prosperity is “inextricably linked” to our relationship with our trading partners, he said, there will be repercussions if an illegitimate government comes to office.
As has been widely reported the current government has been warned by Western countries that Guyana would face sanctions if results which are not credible form the basis for a presidential swearing in. Yet for some inexplicable reason APNU+AFC does not appear to be taking that seriously. It is not as if the private sector is not acutely aware of the disastrous economic consequences which would follow such sanctions. Mr Deygoo-Boyer spoke of how our “fledgling economy would be crippled and the gains that we would have made over the years would be squandered.” He went on to advert to how this “would threaten the prospects that a new and emerging oil and gas sector presents and [it] would set us back for many years to come.”
The current political uncertainty, not to mention the coronavirus are already taking their economic toll, and economists have said that the worldwide pandemic will have serious repercussions for the global economy, from which, it might be added, we will not be insulated. We cannot predict as yet exactly how intense or prolonged our relationship with the virus will be, but what we can say is that even if we escape from that assault on our communal health without as many adverse effects as expected, we will not escape the financial and business catastrophe sanctions would represent, should they be imposed.
While President Granger appears to have surrounded himself with people who regard hanging onto power at all costs as more important than the health or wealth of the nation, one might have thought that considering he personally has a qualification in International Relations from Trinidad he would have had a greater grasp of what was involved. Apparently it is not so. He seems strangely oblivious to the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head, and has persuaded himself that somehow the sanctions can be deflected. They can’t be. In addition, he should not be confident that the possibility does not exist they may be imposed even without an illegal swearing in, if an endless series of delays are made the excuse for an illegitimate government to remain in office for what might seem an indefinite period.
So here we all sit, waiting for the commission to move with dispatch before the full impact of the virus potentially hits us; before the mental stress their antics have imposed on us takes a further toll; before some in the Secretariat engineer an even greater violation of the electorate’s trust; and before the international sanctions which would follow bring us to an economic low point that makes even the 1980s look like an era of plenty. Like Pope Julius II in the movie, the citizenry wants to know, ‘When will they make an end?’
