Mingo’s attempt to manipulate the election was a failed last minute improvisation by the PNC. Not to be outdone, since then the PPP has been improvising with a similar level of success. The failure of the PNC to use its time in government to fulfill its core manifesto promise to constitutionally entrench its main African constituency in government and the party’s greater degree of institutional and street power gave rise to the view that it would not easily demit office. Rooting this perspective in the PNC’s history of electoral manipulations, the PPP weaponised its friends and the international community for a quick kill immediately after elections day if its massive mobilisation effort should succeed. However, rather than ceding power to the PPP, the PNC has attempted to destroy their unspoken conspiracy by accumulating prima facie evidence and accusing the PPP of elections manipulation. The PPP is in no position to reciprocate and has ever since been having its own Mingo moment: improvising to keep a corrupt process alive. Both parties usually engage in substantial elections manipulations that subvert the democratic rights of the Guyanese people and neither deserves to emerge from this debacle with a win.
