Dear Editor,
DESPITE the evident triumphalism of the PPP/C and its supporters, the only real news emerging from the recount exercise is that the 2020 elections were riddled with irregularities, which, in effect, amounts to fraud. As I have long speculated, the votes in the boxes are severely compromised by a widespread and systematic manipulation of an electoral system that easily allowed for such interference. And the culprits are on both sides of the political divide. For the good of Guyana, that fact must be established and acknowledged by GECOM, the various stakeholders, and the Guyanese people.
This letter is not to argue whether numbers should trump system, or whether systemic manipulation must meet a certain threshold in order to become fraud. I think we have passed that point. Suffice to say that any awarding of the election to either the APNU+AFC or the PPP/C would be tantamount to putting the official stamp on electoral fraud. That would, by any measure, be a travesty of formal democracy, but, above all, it would represent a travesty of natural and social justice. And both sides would be justified in feeling cheated.
Guyana is a stubborn country; its people are often put in the position of having to place the political dagger to the proverbial throat of the “other”, and call that act by another name. It is a state of affairs that takes root, and skews the collective minds in dangerous directions, so, we play with danger with little care for the consequences. As is now happening in real-time, we look only for validation of our respective narratives; the “other” ceases to exist as real, living, and legitimate.
Nevertheless, history persists in breaching the walls of that unreason by offering another path. One such path is for GECOM to use the results of the recount to spark a quest for a new order to Guyana, at least in the short-term. Should GECOM annul the election for want of credibility, it could open up a whole new chapter for our beleaguered country. More than two months ago, I floated the idea of annulling the election, and putting in place an interim government, with the express task of overhauling the electoral and governance systems to bring them in line with the crying demands of the country. I was attacked by the “ethnic democrats” and their cohorts in “civil society” as being a madman who wanted to deny the PPP/C its victory and to violate the votes of Guyanese.
Now two months later that very proposal has emerged as a credible alternative to the chaos that is likely to emerge from awarding the election to one of the parties and its camp. In our embrace of the carnival of domination we often do not see commonsense even when it spits in our faces. As it was on the morning of March 3, the fairest decision GECOM should arrive at is the annulling of the election, which then opens the way for an interim power-sharing government for a stipulated period of no more than two years, with the task of doing what I suggested above.
The problem is that the PPP/C, which has already declared itself the winner, is unlikely to embrace such an outcome. We have to deal with that when we get to that point. In the spirit of the times, Guyana deserves to breathe, but to do so, it must get the winner-loser knee off its neck.
Regards,
David Hinds
Source: https://issuu.com/guyanachroniclee-paper/docs/guyana_chronicle_e-paper_6-10-2020