THE month of July is remembered for the martyrdom of Bholanauth Parmanand and Jagan Ramessar both of whom were gunned down by the military for ‘having been at the wrong place at the wrong time’. These two men, in the prime of their productive lives, were shot dead by members of the Guyana Defence Force at the polling station at No. 63 Village, Corentyne.

I have vivid recollections of that sordid moment in our political history. It was on the evening of July 16, 1973 at the close of polling when members of the GDF stormed into the polling place and attempting to cart away ballot boxes to an undisclosed location.

Scores of people, the vast majority of whom were known supporters of the PPP, had gathered in front of the polling station to protest against the removal of the ballot boxes by the military.

The soldiers fired live bullets at the protesters, killing Bholanauth and Ramessar in the process.
Those were the days when the counting of ballots was not done at the place of poll as is currently the case.

All the boxes were taken under military escort to a central polling place where they were tampered with and replaced with fictitious ballots.

Invariably, ballots cast in favour of the PPP were replaced and stuffed by ballots in favour in the PNC. So clumsy were the “rigging” exercise that at one polling station in the Pomeroon a wad of ballot papers was found neatly folded and wrapped with rubber bands, all in favor of the PNC! It took more than the magical powers of Houdini to cause a big wad of ballot papers to pass through a tiny slot in the ballot box.

It was this knowledge and fear that the results of the elections would be changed in favour of the PNC that led to such large gathering of people at polling stations at the end of polling. Under normal situations, eligible voters would cast their ballot and peacefully make their way home until the results were announced hours later.

Not so in the election in the 1973. Voters knew from the experience of the 1968 elections that once the ballots were not counted at the place of poll, the results would not reflect true voters’ preferences as in the case of previous elections.

Such experiences were repeated and replicated in all subsequent elections held since 1968, except that it was done on a much larger scale in every passing election until 1992.

It was only after the intervention of the Carter Centre that the PNC, under Desmond Hoyte, was forced to agree to the counting of ballots at the place of poll. This incidentally was one of the main demands made by the PPP to the Carter Centre which, at first, was vehemently opposed by the PNC.
Hoyte described the counting of votes at the place of poll as a ‘logistical nightmare’. It took a lot of persuasion and arm twisting on the part of the Carter Centre before Hoyte reluctantly agreed to this important demand.
The counting of votes at the place of poll indeed turned out to be a nightmare for the PNC since, for the first time since the elections of 1964, the PNC was made to feel the true ‘heat’ of the Guyanese electorate. The PPP swept the polls in the first democratic election in over two decades, winning by a comfortable margin of victory.
The month of July is remembered also for the brutal slaying to death of Father Darke, a Jesuit priest who, like the ballot box martyrs, also happened to be ‘at the wrong place at the wrong time’. Father Darke, a Jesuit priest and an amateur photographer, was at the time taking out pictures of PNC thugs led by the notorious Rabbi Washington of the House of Israel fame when he was pounced upon and stabbed to death by thugs from that organization.

The pictures were meant to highlight and expose PNC thugs breaking up a political meeting held by the WPA. The incident took place in close proximity to the Brickdam Police Station which spoke volumes on the role of the armed forces in the security of its citizens against organized banditry as happened during the dark days of PNC authoritarian rule.

There are episodes in our history which, as mentioned before, cannot be wished away despite attempts made by some people to downplay and whitewash the role of the army and police in the rupture of the democratic fabric of the Guyanese society.

PULL QUOTE: 
There are episodes in our history which cannot be wished away despite attempts made by some people to downplay and whitewash the role of the army and police in the rupture of the democratic fabric of the Guyanese society.