…after PNC’s shamelessness
Your Eyewitness waited till today to comment about the March 2nd elections. You know why? Because it’s only today, March 4, that he knew for sure that “t’ings na regular” with the voting that had gone so smoothly on March 2. The professionalism continued into the night, as ALL of the 2300+ Polling Stations added up their ballots and posted the Statements of Poll (SOPs) for all to see before the night was over.
The SOPs were duly transferred to the 10 Regional Officers and, by evening the following day, nine of the ten ROs reported their counts. Wasn’t difficult, was it? Just tally up the SOPs’ numbers. So far, so good! But in Reg 4, with the largest number of SOPs, constipation had stepped in: SOPS going in but nothing coming out! That night, the tabulation was halted by RO Mingo – a name that would live in infamy! – after one staff developed “pregnancy pains”. The tabulation was promised to be resumed the next morning at 9am, but -lo and behold – Mingo promptly developed “chest pains”, which caused him to be rushed to the GPHC.
He was soon discharged, but we all knew by then that the rig was on!! We would have to experience revelations like GECOM staff calling Harmon – the PNC campaign manager, the PNC refusing to show its SOPs; spread sheets and flash drives disappearing and re-appearing; numbers produced not matching stakeholders’ SOPs; and finally, Mingo’s unilateral declaration that caused the entire Diplomatic Corps to walk out.
In the meantime, the said Diplomatic Corps and other invited Election Observers were threatened with expulsion, causing Bruce Golding, the former Jamaican PM and Chair of the Commonwealth Observer Mission, to nearly suffer apoplexy! Then, of course, came the recount; the banishment of the CariCom Observer Team and their re-entry on circumscribed terms; the announcement by Ramjattan that he’d personally gone operational and snagged several Russian spies who were hacking our pencil-and-paper voting; the sudden discovery by the PNC that the dead and emigrated were voting; their announcement of the numbers that signalled the PPP had won, followed by the refusal of Lowenfield to accept their numbers.
He then disenfranchised over 100,000 voters to declare the PNC the winner, and back to the judiciary the whole thing went – as it had during the year it took for the PNC to be told they should’ve demitted office since Dec 22, 2018! After the CCJ ruled that Lowenfield couldn’t make up numbers, Granger – dubbed “the Sanctimonious Gangster” by CariCom – knew the game was up.
But it still took threats from the entire West and the rest (of the world) to finally have him decamp on Aug 2nd.
Good riddance to bad rubbish!
…of playing the race card
The year since March 2, 2020 has also been one of living dangerously, with the PNC pulling out the race card it created since its formation in 1958, when megalomaniac Burnham split the unified PPP. In mobilising African-Guyanese under the banner of the PNC, he insisted the PPP was a racial party and African-Guyanese could count only on him. And this has been the PNC’s modus operandi ever since!
So, it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that when the PNC discovered they’d lost the elections by March 3 – after looking at their SOPs – they thundered that the PPP had rigged them out of office! Mainly by claiming that 40 ballot boxes from Indian-Guyanese-dominated areas on the East Coast Demerara were counted and dead and emigrated Indian- Guyanese had also voted.
Another incendiary accusation was that the mainly African- Guyanese Disciplined Forces’ votes hadn’t been counted!
It was into that incendiary, racially polarised atmosphere that Granger tossed his lit match on the West Coast of Berbice!
…bravery
But while the last year was a time of danger, it was also a time of bravery. Standing up to the PNC’s bullyism, many Guyanese rose to the challenge and repelled them.
They’ll be rewarded with President Ali’s “Order of Democracy”!
