WHAT is the connection between a bloated list, electoral fraud and the birth of a dictatorship? This question is best answered with a clear explanation of the dangers of an inflated voter roll, how it invites and facilitates voter fraud and how this is tied to the beginning of dictatorship.

ELECTORAL FRAUD: PARTY AGENTS AND ELECTIONS OFFICIALS
Those who talk up elections safeguards often passionately argue that it is virtually impossible for a person who is not on the electoral register to register a vote due to the aforementioned. If this were the case, the world would not have been so concerned about rigged elections. Researchers and writers such as Patrick Gathara (Financial Times) and Seema Shah (The Elephant) have expressed the complete loss of confidence in elections as a facilitator of the will of the people in modern democracies.

Also, the safeguards proponents point to the fact that party agents and elections officials are right there in the polling stations and all and sundry can see any attempts at fraud. This erroneous argumentation proceeds from the assumption that party agents and elections officials are immune and resistant to bribes in the context of the mother of elections in a small underdeveloped nation. With billions at stake and international and local business interests vying for control of the state apparatus in a nascent oil and gas economy, is it magical thinking for elections officials and party polling agents to accept GY$300,000 to go take a few washroom breaks and blindly sign off on documents to allow elections skullduggery?.

In addition, most elections officials and party agents are temporary workers who are employed for short periods of time and some are usually in unsatisfactory paying jobs, their susceptibility to bribery is extremely high. Given Guyana’s terrain, this scenario is more likely in far-flung communities where there is entrenched domination by a political party and fewer eyes. It is naïve at best and fanatical at worst to passionately pontificate that fraudulent elections are not possible with modern electoral safeguards.

The Bloated List
As you have may have gathered by now, Guyana possesses the dreaded bloated list which is a dangerous posture for a plural society that teems with the potential for ethnic anxieties.

The evidence being unearthed in the National Recount thus far has demonstrated that despite passionate defenses of the numerous safeguards introduced by modern electoral reforms, the system can be breached. As long as this situation remains, electoral fraud will be with us. With that in mind, it is necessary to examine the extent of the fraud that was allegedly perpetrated on the nation on March 2nd, 2020. 83,000 votes are now the subject of an active investigation by the Guyana Elections Commission.

It is being alleged that these votes were cast by dead voters and those who were not in the jurisdiction on the day of voting. This generically amounts or translates into 11 seats in the National Assembly and teems with a staggering amount of fake representation that has nothing to do with the will of the people expressed at the national elections.

When non-legal electors vote en masse, there is the cataclysmic, apocalyptic and biblical betrayal of democracy and has the potential to produce concocted leadership that will invariably decay. In the process, this tutelage will not be accepted by the majority whose voices were silenced at the polls due to diabolical machinations.

BIRTH OF A DICTATORSHIP
Against this backdrop, any actor filled with a thirst for victory from a process without credibility would find themselves on the side of those who are comfortable with illegitimate government. This would place them in the corner of dictatorship and they would not enjoy the confidence of the populace.

Consequentially, visceral opposition by those legitimate voters will manifest in every crevice of the society and the government from that corrupt process will be backed into a corner. This will invariably result in response methods that will be the birth of a full-fledged dictatorship.

It has become painfully clear if only by public perception, there should be no serious effort to insert a government based on numbers from this National Recount, the evidence puts us down a problematic path if this is done.