Dear Editor,
To clarify matters and claim ownership since the letter was mentioned in your editorial of Easter Sunday I, living in London since 1980, am the Peter Fraser who calculated how long it would take to count the votes in other peoples’ elections at the rate of 3,031 a day. I did not intend to mock the Chief Election Officer or GECOM. The problem is not GECOM.
Both major parties believe when in power at the time of an election that the purpose of GECOM is to declare them the winner: allegations about the 1992 election and the 2015 election support that observation.
Both major parties benefit from the Guyanese modification of democratic centralism in describing their party organization to democratic one-mannism. Our Constitution, despite minor modifications, exemplifies that one-mannism (my apologies to the late President Janet Jagan).
Both parties, and the history of living standards since 1966 bears this out, do little or nothing for the mass of their supporters when in power.
Both parties incite their supporters against the other party at election time thereby invoking the spectre of violence and fear and hostility that have their origins in the violence of 1962 to 1964: violence casts a long shadow on the life of any nation.
William Demas, the Trinidadian economist, once described becoming an oil-producer for poor countries was like a poor person winning the lottery: the money is usually wasted and does nothing for the poor of that country.
Still surely GECOM can be allowed count expeditiously.
Yours faithfully,
Peter D. Fraser
(Mr but also Dr)
London
