IN my first letter captioned: “The people have spoken; a comprehensive look at elections 2011” I forcefully hammered home the fact that a party’s careless handling of that which they already have, while chasingafteran illusion, the consequences would be dire. It is tantamount to the proverbial bird in the hand is worth two in the bush syndrome where you make reckless gamble with the so called two birds in the bush when the one firmly planted in your hand was allowed to fly away. Well, at least so it seems, because for certain that one bird did not fly away.
If that one bird Berbice did fly away I shudder to think what would have happened to my party and our dear country, by now we would have been wallowing in the mire of a stunning defeat. Had they not given their vote the PPP/C in essence was history.
Berbice very nearly teetered on the brink of going for an all out mutiny on the PPP/C thankfully it only amounted to a roughing up which I think has sobered them into reality.
My discourse today is another revisit of the issues and circumstances surrounding election 2011 and how we got to this juncture.
Firstly, this writer is on record expressing his dissatisfaction with the way GECOM conducted its registration exercise. The process was flawed from the very beginning with that no birth name no registration dogma.
This law, in its truest sense was enacted to weed out persons having more than one form of identification which meant that persons could not cast more than one ballot; something election officials have been plagued with since the restoration of democracy in 1992. But as good a law as it was meant to be, it also had that crippling effect of  debarring legitimate registrants from getting on the voters list.
Again Berbice comes into the spotlight where hundreds of voters were disenfranchised by that process.
This writer, who is a Berbician after doing some canvassing for my party made careful observation of this anomaly wherein I hastily notified the relevant authorities of my findings.
My communication to them issued an urgent call for a reopening of registration to allow those countless individuals the proper tool for the exercising of their franchise.
Well, those contacted treated my advice with scant regard probably thinking an election victory for the PPP/C was a foregone conclusion so there was no need to worry.
In this regard no action was forthcoming to correct the situation hence, we went into the election with a number of eager PPP/C supporters lacking the wherewithal to vote. I
am absolutely sure that those disenfranchised voters coupled with the stay always we would have seen a significant difference in the results. In fact, what saved the PPP/C’s
hide was a ninth hour dash to secure a passport to vote; of course this being a fraction of the overwhelming majority who got fed up with the hassle and gave up the fight.
Finally, there needs to be a serious look at the way people cast their ballot in Guyana when I say this I mean the system of voting for a respective party. With so many  thousands of rejected ballots something is radically wrong with the way we do things here. For surety we are not an illiterate nation, why is it so difficult to cast a valid ballot?
It all boils down to voter education, something GECOM and the various political parties should do before another election is called.