In what must be seen as an act of desperation, Sophia resident Ms Eslyn David filed an application in the Appeal Court on June 18 seeking to prevent Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield from submitting his final report to the Elections Commission. GECOM Chair Claudette Singh had required him to compile it in accordance with results from the recount process and submit it by 1pm on Thursday, which he did not do. It was fully expected that following that submission, Justice Singh would have issued a final declaration naming the PPP/C and their presidential candidate Irfaan Ali as winners of the March 2 poll, but once again the logical course of action was circumvented.
As is traditional in political cases in this country, Ms David is simply a front for those forces still committed to trying to reorient the inevitable. If recent events seem all too incredible for the majority which did not vote for the coalition as well as for some of those who did, for the second time last week Justice Singh spoke for sanity and reason, this time via her affidavit drawn up by her attorney Kim Kyte-Thomas urging dismissal of the case.
Ms David based her challenge on Article 177 (4) of the Constitution giving the court exclusive jurisdiction to hear and determine any question pertaining to the validity of an election of a president, and argued that the result of the votes cast in the elections were not credible, and therefore the CEO should not present a final report.
In response, the GECOM Chair maintained that an incomplete election cannot be nullified and an unelected president cannot be disqualified. She said, “It is respectfully submitted that such a challenge cannot be entertained at this time on the basis that it is premature. Any challenge to the validity of an election and any dispute or claim of any irregularities or illegalities in relation to an election can only lawfully form the basis of an election petition after the result of the election has been made known.”
It was an argument (among several others) restated by lawyers representing seven political parties who had been given permission by the court to respond to the application, and anyone familiar with our convoluted post-electoral story instantly recognised its soundness.
(It should be noted that the GECOM Chair is not the only respondent, since the Commission and the CEO are also named although they are unrepresented, as well as Attorney General Basil Williams.)
For all of this, the majority of the electorate really does not need to follow the legal submissions to know that Ms David’s case has no substance. It is at bottom not about the law at all; its purpose, as indicated earlier, is about another attempt to pervert the true outcome of the election. Those who are trying to cling so frantically to office utilising the services of a corrupt element in the GECOM Secretariat, are casting around for every stratagem available to them, legal and otherwise, closing their eyes to what was recorded in the SoPs from the March 2 poll, to the results of the recount, to the earlier rulings of the High Court and the Appeal Court and to Justice Singh’s explicit instruction to the CEO.
And at their apex sits the de facto President, who has assured the nation in all seriousness on more than one occasion that he would accept the official declaration of the results by the GECOM Chair. Yet here he is, by virtue of his leadership, complicit in preventing that official declaration from being made. It is a lesson, if any were needed, that a superior education and a veneer of sophistication are no guarantee of insulation from the hunger for power which motivates every tin-pot dictator across the face of the planet.
And when this current tack has been pursued to its limit and any other potential legal routes have run their course, what do Mr Granger and his cohorts propose to do then? Whatever they think it may be, the reality is that at the end of the road there are only two choices: concede that the PPP/C won the election or hold onto power by force. Surely even they realise the latter route is to guarantee eviction from the comity of western nations, with all that that implies, not to mention the catastrophe for the country it would represent. But if they do apprehend the need for concession (and admittedly no one holds out great hope that they do), then what is all this procrastination in aid of?
The kindest thing to think in that case would be that it represented a rather inadequate attempt to let down their supporters softly, so they could say to them we did everything possible through the courts which did not support us earlier, but we will now bring an elections petition. And an elections petition would seem an obvious and acceptable route, although it can only be brought after a declaration is made.
Whatever they do, their supporters do constitute a problem. Even some of their educated echelons are not independently assessing the evidence; as it is, they are not even reading the evidence let alone addressing their minds to the contradictions inherent in what they have been told. They are simply accepting in good faith the perverted accounts provided by the leaders, and believe without research that the election has indeed been invalidated by innumerable irregularities. And since some of the thinking segments of the party are so persuaded, it is hardly surprising that the rank and file are of the same opinion too.
Perhaps the full nature of the problem was illustrated on Thursday when there was a protest gathering of around one hundred APNU+AFC supporters in New Amsterdam in defiance of the COVID-19 regulations. They were addressed at the party’s office by candidate Ms Barbara Pilgrim, whom we reported as telling them not to give up and that they were in it for the “long haul.” Among various other things, she also told them to back CEO Keith Lowenfield, and that his report was the only one they were going to accept. “Let’s keep hope alive and lift the hands of David Arthur Granger,” we quoted her as saying melodramatically, “Let him know that we stand with him 100% and we going down in the trenches with him.”
Most significant of all, Ms Pilgrim implored her audience only to listen to news emanating from party officials. “When we say this is so, then that is so; don’t listen to other people, comrades,” she said. So much for pursuing the truth.
It was former Business Minister Dominic Gaskin, the only man in the coalition to have spoken out at an earlier stage against the fraudulent vote count by Mr Clairmont Mingo in Region Four, who in a Facebook post on Friday said that APNU+AFC had been deliberately misleading its supporters with grossly exaggerated claims of electoral fraud. He urged the need for honesty on the party, which should now accept defeat and work at bringing back the swing voters it would require if it is to win in the future.
“The claims of fraud were grossly exaggerated,” he wrote, “and, unfortunately, designed to fool party supporters, who had placed their faith in the coalition, into believing that there was actual evidence of serious elections rigging by the PPP-C.” He went on to say, “There is no reasonable basis on which you can claim to have won more votes than the PPP-C in these elections. Level with your supporters and start directing your energies towards becoming a credible opposition party in time for 2025.”
As mentioned earlier, the issue is, of course, how they go around doing that, after they have created a whole party ethos that they have been cheated. And the more they pursue flimsy legal challenges, the more that ethos becomes entrenched. Perhaps Mr Gaskin’s most disturbing conclusion which he described as “uncomfortable” was that “APNU+AFC has no intention of relinquishing control of the government.” If that indeed turns out to be so, and Ms Pilgrim’s sentiments are anything to go by, then the mass base of the party will give them support. At a minimum, if this becomes the direction of events, it is not a prospect that anyone welcomes.
To date, most of the delays engineered by the coalition have been accomplished by recourse to the courts. And now we have another case in the Appeal Court this time. Before we can have any idea of the direction in which the party of delay and confusion intends to lead us, we will first have to await the rulings in what Mr Gaskin called “yet another tedious challenge.”
