RELEASING on social media a series of advertisements highlighting the transition of Guyana’s political culture under former President Hugh Desmond Hoyte, the coalesced A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) has acknowledged that, prior to 1992, General and Regional Elections were not “free and fair.”In an attempt to underscore the positive influence the People’s National Congress (PNC) would have had on Guyana, the coalition’s public relations team released several campaign ads which reflected on the work of President Desmond Hoyte following his assumption of office; but these attempts at selling the glory of the PNC in the past come at a time when the same APNU+AFC coalition has chastised the ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP) for using the “past” as a political tool on its campaign trail.

One of these ads, which has a graphic design stamped “Fact” at the top, declares: “The first free and fair elections were held in 1992 under the Hoyte Administration, and not under the PPP/C! Democracy was returned peacefully under the PNC.”
But this acceptance by the coalition that, prior to 1992, elections had not been “free and fair” is not a “fact” accepted by Presidential Candidate of the same coalition, Mr David Granger. Making his debut as Presidential Candidate of the APNU in 2011, Mr David Granger was reluctant to admit that, under Burnham, elections were rigged.

He exhibited this reluctance to face an inescapable fact prior to the November 2011 elections in an interview with Kaieteur News’ Journalist Neil Marks.

In the article, published on Sunday, April 10, Granger was quoted as saying, “I don’t have evidence that they were rigged.”

He had gone on to urge the journalist thus, “You’ll have to look at the record. The record, as far as the PPP is concerned, is that the elections were rigged. I’ve heard people say that; I personally never rigged anything!”

But Granger’s running mate and Prime Ministerial Candidate of the coalition has repeatedly lambasted the PNC for these historical claims of rigging.
During the general elections of 1980, Nagamootoo was described as a “colossus” who stood against the PNC big guns for three nights on the call-in programme ‘Action Line’, detailing all the facts and figures of the PNC rigging in the 1968, 1974 and the then current 1980 elections.

More recently, on February 5, Nagamootoo was quoted in a Facebook post written on his page acknowledging that elections were indeed “rigged.”
Underscoring the work of former President and founder of the PPP, Dr. Cheddi Jagan, and his struggle for a coalition between the PPP and PNC, Nagamootoo related that, “He [Dr. Jagan] did that before and after Independence, before and after episodes of rigged elections.”

He continued: “Not long after rigged elections in 1973, the PPP gave the PNC Government “critical support”, which was a form of alliance, only that the PPP was not included in the Government. By 1977, on the eve of the rigged referendum, the PPP proposed a National Patriotic Front Government that would include the PPP and PNC.

“The PPP again courted Burnham to form a PNC-PPP coalition Government AFTER Walter Rodney was killed, and AFTER the 1980 elections were rigged” the APNU+AFC Prime Ministerial candidate revealed.

Despite this revelation, however, Granger’s deafening silence has been maintained on issues surrounding the rigged elections of 1968, 1974 and 1980.