Dear Editor,
Permit my audacity responding to your editorial note on letter captioned, `Editorial note was an act of suppression and an attempt not to acknowledge profound aspects of the Recount Order’ on Friday, 5th June, 2020. I anticipated your editorial note. It is your prerogative to exercise same as the prerogative over truth and lies; fact and fiction is exercised. Media exercise control over fact and fiction in society.
Inherent in your response is a suggestion of disregard for the Rule of Law as it relates to the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) and its singular constitutional role to conduct elections that reflect the will of the people. This lends further clarity to the perception that Stabroek News (SN) is quite prepared to support, advance, and present a state of lawlessness as it relates to Guyana’s election processes. This is evident in the note demonstrating blatant disregard for the legal guidelines governing the recount of the gazetted Order of 4th May.
The newspaper expressed a view (of what should have been) based on a clamouring call by the Opposition for recount of Region Four only. Though acknowledging the CARICOM aide memoire brokered, the paper ignored GECOM as the final arbiter and only legal authority regarding same and what it constitutes. Said recount is taking place under rules crafted and agreed to by GECOM and documented in the 4th May gazetted Order.
The newspaper ignores, as Bharrat Jagdeo pointed out before, and as the law stipulates it is GECOM & GECOM alone to make such decisions. It is not the President, the Leader of the Opposition, John public and definitely not the role of any other to therefore say what should be in an effort to undermine what is the legal guideline for all to follow. It is crass to so do. This show of scant disregard for the law is further injurious to the image of the newspaper in the minds of right thinking persons. To some it may be seen as irresponsible journalism.
As per SN, “A recount is what the country was promised and that is what will be.” Words like these could only be spoken of such definitiveness when one is confident knowing the overpowering machinery and forces at work to deny adherence to the gazetted Order; by undercutting the legal guidelines therein. The newspaper’s reference to “extraneous” matters in the Order symbolises a prevailing level of presumptuous for selective application for the law in our society that unfortunately some mainstream media are championing.
Yours faithfully,
Lincoln Lewis
Editor-in-Chief’s note: The elections have already been conducted by GECOM and its only role now is the declaration of a result. It is prohibited by the Constitution from probing the quality of the election. Therefore to the extent that the recount order trespasses on the Constitution the extraneous matters referred to should be disregarded. It is worth noting that this extra-long recount has been occasioned by a naked act of fraud by the District Four Returning Officer to which a blind eye has been turned by many in society.
