Dear Editor,
ON Friday, July 10, U.S. President Donald Trump commuted the sentence of Roger Stone, a Republican :activist who was sentenced to seven years for obstruction, witness-tampering and making false statements to Congress in relation to FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Republicans are generally happy with Trump’s decision while Democrats are livid. Many Republicans belie,,, that Roger Stone was unfairly targeted by biased prosecutors and that he did not commit a crime which warranted such a long prison sentence. Democrats on the other hand, believe that he lied to protect the President and for that ht should be locked up for a long time.
TI1e differences in the way Republicans and Democrats feel about the Roger Stone case is attributed to heuristic biases that influence the way we see and process information. Human tend to readily accept and believe what is said by those whom they support, and to disregard information that conflict with their pre existing beliefs. This explains why Trump ‘s supporters always seem to agree with what he says.
In Guyana, these biases explain why APNU+AFC supporters believe that the PPP/C rigged the 2020 elections, while at the same time, PPP/C supporters bel1eve it is the APNU+AFC coalition that is attempting to steal the elections. People tend to accept ooly that information supporting what they believe to be true. For this reason, facts often do not change peoples’ minds. And it does not matter that the recount exercise exposed facts showing that there was voter impersonation at the March 2 elections, people will continue to believe what they already hold to be true.
For die past-five months, coalition leaders consistently claim that the PPP/C exploited the bloated electoral list to rig the, March 2 elections. The western diplomats continue to disregard those claims. Respected businessman Stanley Ming highlighted the absurdity of an election result showing more people voted than is possible, given our population. Western diplomats continue to disregard that possibility. The recount exercise exposed many serious anomalies, all pointing to a conclusion that the PPP/C rigged the elections, yet western diplomats continue to disregard those facts. It seems therefore that western diplomats are indeed humans; they also suffer from the effects of human cognitive biases. And unless there is an illegal covert intelligence operation aimed at ousting the coalition, one can only assume that the western diplomats’ continued disregard of evidence showing the PPP fraud is an effect of heuristic biases.
When foreign diplomat allow cognitive biases to affect their judgements, they risk relaying biased and inaccurate information back to their respective governments. TI1ose governments will consequently make poor foreign policy decisions based on faulty information. In some cases, diplomats are deliberately fed fabricated information to influence policy decisions.
A case in point is the 2003 U.S. decision to invade Iraq. As noted in Wikipedia, Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi, with the help of lobbying firm, BKSH & Associates provided U.S. Intelligence with fabricated information suggesting that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that he had ties to al-Qaeda. Chalabi at the time desperately wanted to become President of Iraq, and he found a way to effectively deceive the Americans into helping him to remove Saddam Hussein. The result of Chalabi’s greedy ambition is the complete destruction of his country and a more destabilised Middle East region.
Let us hope that the posture taken by western diplomats in Guyana is not influenced by fabricated information and/or greedy ambition, and that the coalition’s assertion of electoral fraud is not indefinitely blacked out.
Source: https://issuu.com/guyanachroniclee-paper/docs/guyana_chronicle_epaper_07_13_2020