Dear editor,
I DO recognise that our Guardians and Champions of Democracy are only awake when they serve to peddle the have PPP’s narrative of misinformation. I also do recognise that the failed de facto leader of that group, the failed academic, the failed column writer, the failed political analyst, the failed Phd student and the failed researcher Freddie Kissoon may conveniently develop political myopia when it comes to this important and pertinent issue that I’m about to share, hence I would humbly ask that one of his “democrats “share same with the perennial and failed Mingo basher, once his political eyes have been reopened .

Mr. Editor, the PPP were bawling like bereaved relatives of a deceased, when they discovered that it was five more years and likely longer, in opposition for them. They employed adjectives such as rigged, fraud and cheated among other similar-meaning literary tools. They maligned everyone, including the Gods. The GECOM Chairperson endured daily public derogatory name calling and misogynistic attacks. President Granger, Clairmont Mingo, Keith Lowenfield and Roxanne Myers had to endure daily public racist innuendos-laced verbal and written attacks. They painted themselves as whiter than white. They demanded a recount. They got their recount. And now this.

Anil Nandlall, one of the many PPP members rightly facing criminal charges, desperately made these utterance at the ACCC on Saturday with reference to the recount, “Why are you expanding the scope of the process [to] check off things like the List of Electors who were ticked [off] by the presiding officers? What is the purpose of that? Why are you going to open envelopes of unused ballots and count it?”
Further Nandlall said this,

“Why are we running in a collision course with the law? Why not recount the ballots, isn’t that what we are asking for, a recount of the ballots cast by the electorate? Why are we going to examine the whole process of elections? You are bound to find irregularities. That to me is creating a platform for unnecessary queries to be raised because we are embarking on a scope of a process that is so wide that it was never intended. We asked for a recount. GECOM agreed to a recount. The President and Jagdeo agreed to a recount.

Why are we doing all these things, to create platforms for queries to be made, for objections to be made, to derail the process to the end.” Finally, Nandlall then shockingly admitted that there may have been, “errand (sic) or delinquent” presiding officers who may not have accurately ticked off the names of persons who voted and as such give rise to discrepancies.

Mr. Editor, these are the words of PPP chief legal adviser, a man who is likely to have chosen his words carefully. The fact is, I have longed concluded that the PPP were trying to avoid entering those ballot boxes as if within them was the smallpox virus. First after agreeing to a chronological recount of 1-10 they reneged and demanded only Region Four be recounted. They once again reneged and now made the irrational demand of all regions, but illogically starting from Region Four.Then they turned to rushing through the process in 10 days, to minimise contact with their feared smallpox virus. Then they changed to 14 days.

In effect, they were all over the place like scattered rice which is a reflection of the scattered brain and scattered attempt at rigging. Now they wish to place the blame on an errand(sic) presiding officer.

To begin, the poor chap, in his state of despair, can’t even get his errant and errand right. For surely, I would not expect these presiding officers to be running errands when there was a serious business of election to conduct. This errant not errand hypothesis may be true, but what if the errant not errand presiding officers are mostly associated with the PPP and attributing more votes to them than they actually got? What about if the errant not errand presiding officers, who inaccurately ticked off the wrong names, are mostly aligned to the PPP? What if these inaccurate ticking of names have a much higher incidence than that expected from human error? Surely, the aforementioned cannot be attributed to a rogue presiding officer. Surely this cannot be viewed as an isolated event but rather systemic which could have influenced the outcome of the elections. The fact is that none of us know if such incidents, if they ever actually arise during the recount are isolated or systemic. As a result, applying Murphy’s law, GECOM should enter those boxes prepared for the worse ie that is incidents are systemic.

Then Nandlall is arguing for a numeral recount. Putting aside the allegations of fraud that the PPP alleges, it is clear that a recount simply means a repeat of a count. Since amalgamating the words “repeat” and “count” would be linguistically and aesthetically unattractive the prefix “re” derived from repeat is used hence the word recount. As a result, from basic semantics a recount has to include or retrace the steps taken during the initial count. Hence , it is illogical and nonsensical to argue or believe that it should simply be a numerical recount, since the initial count was not only numerical.

In concluding, It is now abundantly clear that the PPP never wanted this recount albeit, a numerical count which would have kept their skeletons in those ballot boxes were their preference. The fact is that the PPP has done much damage to Guyana on the international stage. They have brought GECOM into disrepute. Now the Mercury- free repair process has begun. Now the recount is about to begin. PPP, this is your last chance to come clean with the electorate that you had rigged the elections. Try striking a plea deal with the electorate, when they may be amenable to it. Once those boxes are opened, plea-dealing is off the table and the political penalty will be very severe.
Regards
Dr. Mark Devonish

Source: https://issuu.com/guyanachroniclee-paper/docs/guyana_chronicle_epaper_05_04_2020