Most Guyanese are hoping that the CCJ’s decision on Wednesday marks the end of the long excursion into legal back alleys intended to block the declaration of the true result of the election held on March 2nd.
Ms Eslyn David had earlier brought an action in the Appeal Court asking for a number of orders against Gecom. Among other things she was seeking to confine the declaration of results to votes categorised as valid by Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield. The court had ruled that the interpretation of “more votes are cast” in the Constitution should mean “more valid votes are cast,” and it was on the basis of this decision that Mr Lowenfield had presented his belated report whereby he removed more than 115,000 ballots from the total count. This would have ensured that APNU+AFC won the poll.
However, the justices of Guyana’s highest court were clear and unambiguous. In the first place they ruled that they did have jurisdiction to hear the case brought by Bharrat Jagdeo and Irfaan Ali, contrary to the arguments put forward by the coalition counsel, and in the second, that the Appeal Court did not have the jurisdiction to make the order which it had. Redress for electoral irregularities such as those claimed by Joseph Harmon, it said, would have to be pursued by the route of an elections petition.
Since the CCJ found that the Court of Appeal’s order was made without jurisdiction and should be set aside, then equally the report by the Chief Election Officer which was based on it was invalid. The court held it was not consistent with the Constitution for the CEO or Gecom arbitrarily to disenfranchise thousands of voters without the due process laid down in Article 163 as well as in the Validity of Elections Act.
This means that the way is finally cleared for the Guyana Elections Commission to make a declaration based on the recount. The less optimistic news, however, is that caretaker President David Granger is hanging desperately on to the position that massive fraud took place in the election. While he told a number of his supporters who had congregated outside the gates of State House that the CCJ’s judgment did not end the matter, he did go on to say that it was the Guyana Elections Commission which would have to make the final decision.
Some of his other remarks, however, were disturbing. “[W]e will continue the fight to make sure that your votes are counted,” he told his audience, although there was no indication of what form that would take if Gecom declared the PPP/C the winner, as it is expected to do. Then he went on to rewrite history. “It is the first time this has happened in the history of our country, and it has happened because there are some bad elements out there who tried to manipulate the vote by having votes recorded for dead people [and for] people who had migrated, [as well as] more votes in a polling station than they had electors. We know all of the faults and our party, our partnership and our coalition has been bringing these complaints of abuses and irregularities to the attention of the public and also to the attention of the court,” he said.
This was an extraordinary statement, considering that all the irregularities he listed are associated with the PNC period in office between 1968 and 1985. The electoral theft during these years is well attested to, including by the UK Granada television station, which highlighted the trickery employed in the 1968 and 1973 elections. For him to claim, therefore, that electoral fraud has never happened before in this country when his own party was the main perpetrator, is nothing short of shameless.
The PNC as a party has never acknowledged the rigging of elections in the past, and the de facto President certainly never has. As a consequence, most of the members of the PNR who were either small children or not even born yet when Burnham was alive, will probably never have been told about it, and will accept Mr Granger’s words as gospel.
It is not that the PPP/C can claim an entirely blameless record, as its retention of a seat which belonged to the AFC in the 2006 election and the strange story of the 10,000 votes in the 2011 poll will attest; it is simply that its majority in the March 2nd election was not achieved by foul means. In fact, the coalition has produced not an iota of evidence to substantiate its claim of massive irregularities. In any event, as the CCJ has now made clear, reinforcing what Gecom Chair Claudette Singh had already written to Mr Lowenfield, the only avenue which is open to the coalition is an elections petition.
Will the de facto President accept the Gecom Declaration as he has promised to do, and then perhaps bring an elections petition as he is entitled to do? He also told his supporters that “our party, our partnership and our coalition are committed to the rule of law.” Citizens hope that despite his other words which might appear to contradict this, that thought is what is uppermost in his mind.
