Dear Editor,
BHARRAT JAGDEO, the PPP, and others at home and from abroad have been using every available medium to communicate their preferred outcome of our March 2 elections. But none of them, I think, would have advanced the same arguments if adherence to electoral democracy were their paramount interest.
Their mantra, before the recount agreement was reached, was that the tabulation has to be credible. It has since changed to a “credible recount”. To these folks, including sections of the media, it is of no importance or relevance whatsoever that mounting evidence shows that the numbers being tabulated are coming from votes of questionable validity due to egregious and irrefutable violations of the voting process at polling stations. So, they have by implication declared: “Let the statutorily-imposed voting process at polling stations be damned! No consideration is to be given to how and why votes got into the ballot boxes. Only a credible recount and a credible tabulation process matter. Democracy in the voting process needs nothing else!”
But do these self-proclaimed advocates of democracy really want us to believe that democracy in the voting process is now reduced to merely a credible recount and tabulation as opposed to the most important first step of confirming that the process that produced the votes was strictly adhered to, thereby ensuring that only valid votes are submitted to be tabulated? Have these folks invented a new form of democracy called Tabulation and Recount Democracy minus the verification of the validity of the votes cast?
The violations of our electoral process found in many ballot boxes are as clear and as irrefutable as the confirmation of vote differences between the SORs for some boxes and the first tabulations for the very boxes. So why should GECOM accept the SORs but ignore or reject the process violations being unearthed, many of which affect votes included on SORs? Isn’t it obvious that a process is in place to ensure that only valid votes are cast? And isn’t it also obvious that a violation of the process leads to invalid votes? And that no credible tabulation of invalid votes should be accepted as a credible recount? No less a person than the PPP’s Anil Nandlall said that acts of fraud nullifies the electoral process!
GECOM has full constitutional and legal authority to determine the validity of the votes it uses in tabulations to declare the winner of an election. So, it must faithfully exercise that authority without regard to the self-serving or for-hire comments of local or foreign persons. Yes, GECOM must neither condone nor reward the polling-station violations. For though courts can later examine GECOM’s decision, they cannot stop GECOM from determining the validity of votes. So, Anil Nandlall’s threat of legal action to force GECOM to just count the votes is as empty as the space into which his threat was uttered.
But our courts may very well be needed in an unprecedented way if GECOM decided it could not determine a winner because too many votes were compromised by the aforementioned irrefutable and egregious violations of the voting process at many polling stations. I do not see this as being awful, because our courts are always asked to deal with unprecedented issues and make precedent–setting decisions in our precedential judicial system.
When APNU+AFC and their supporters rightly started questioning the credibility of the elections and pointed out that observers can all witness tabulations but couldn’t visit all polling stations, they were asked if they had not said that the elections were credible. This seemingly reasonable but transparently self-serving attempt to hold persons to their prima facie statement that the elections were free, fair, and credible is as ludicrous as trying to convict or exonerate someone of a crime on the basis of a prosecutor’s or a defense attorney’s opening statements, even though evidence presented during the trial contradicted whatever was asserted in those opening statements. Evidence found during the recount has contradicted the prima facie statement that the election was credible. So APNU+AFC has every right to amend that statement. There is no need to emulate others in being head-in-the-sand obdurate.
Whatever ultimately results from the ongoing recount, Guyanese will have been finally presented with incontrovertible proof that the PPP barefacedly rigs elections. Though it is often remarked that ‘the proof is in the pudding,’ the proof of the PPP’s rigging is in and outside the box. No wonder the PPP was more interested in retabulation than it was in recount. It is not true that recounting Region Four was the PPP’s first option. The PPP reluctantly agreed to the recount of all regions only after it had vehemently but unsuccessfully argued for a retabulation only of Region Four. Now we know why. Our constitution must be upheld. And Anil Nandlall’s solution for electoral fraud should be implemented.
Regards,
Lionel Lowe
Source: https://issuu.com/guyanachroniclee-paper/docs/guyana_chronicle_epaper_06_08_2020