Dear Editor
Let us go down memory lane of not so long ago. Remember opposition leader Bharat Jagdeo’s statement when he tabled the NCM? That the debate would be beneficial to Guyana? Of course, there was a debate that preceded the act of parliamentary treachery – the now infamous Charandass betrayal. We must further remember that what had been significant about this political Judas’ contribution to the NCM motion debate, was his fulsome praise of the coalition party’s socio-economic record of achievements, which in any objective House examination for such a reason of motion, would have been difficult to defeat, or fault.

However, Charandass’ shocking somersault, not only contradicted what he had defended on the floor as his then party’s record of successful national development, but also equally nail the lie that was the pretense of Jagdeo’s motion. The latter was nothing else but a naked act of seeking to remove a government by way of extra parliamentary, under the guise of constitutional means.

Editor, ad nauseam, this has been stated many times over in your Letters column, for persons to understand clearly that this particular act had been the culmination of an orchestrated movement, as evident by the gradual, growing collective of disparate elements, inclusive of the Private Sector and media, spearheaded by the PPP/C opposition, that aimed at fomenting social unrest. It was evident that the resort to racism as a major tool was a means of heightening national stress, as can be clearly seen today.

Yet, it must be understood that the above was a clear manifestation of what had been the new morality of fraud as the national means of justifying whatever ends envisaged, as a way of life, as far as the political opposition and sections of the national demographics. The experience of two decades plus of bad governance, with all acts of criminal manifestations, supports the conclusion of distortion to the national psyche, out of which the new morality has been born. It further underlined the reasons behind the numerous initiatives by the coalition government to explain the deleterious effects of such a cancerous sub social behavior to the future development of the State.

We must now come to the second aspect of this course of dishonest political behaviour – the vehement objections to a new voters’ list that was to have been made possible by house-to-house registration. In this unusual protest, by the political opposition that had always supported such an electoral process, the daily frenetic clamour by the PPP/C and its phalanx of all sorts – mercenaries of varied types – signalled yet another desperate manifestation that playing according to the rules, the principles of political morality, were no longer the gold standard of accepted basic political behaviour.
But this objection to house-to-house registration, which even occasioned a challenge to the

court on its Constitutionality, and witnessed the hypocritical silence of the so called moralists – finally exposed by their public pronouncements that reeked of duplicity and high hypocrisy – was still another act that underlined how deeply engrained the use of intended fraud, and its actuality was becoming standard, as part of opposition electoral politics.

Therefore, the third significance of this effortless use of fraud that has been brutally exposed by the coalition insistence of a full national recount of all ballots cast on March 2, and facilitated by ORDER NUMBER 60 OF THE GAZZETTED ORDER, must now be examined.
The unearthing of the numerous acts of political venalities, speaks of an unbridled recklessness that was extended to what must be described as a nation’s marquee constitutional exercise of its citizens exercising THE FREE WILL. It speaks to the GROSS DISRESPECT OF THE CITIZENS, IN ADDITION TO THE DISREGARD FOR THEIR RIGHT OF ELECTORAL CHOICE.

Editor, it cannot be lost on any political leader, and their followers, and the nation at large, how important a sanitised list is, and must be for the purpose of a national election, and its necessity for free and fair elections which must be transparent. But the mere fact that a major political party would have put up such a life and death struggle to abort this process, speaks as much for its political social orientation as being a promoter, supporter and upholder of electoral fraud. For any political opposition party, or any other associated type to be so recklessly bold, and brazen in utilising the method of fraud in its quest for political power, points to a disregard for the untold consequences which it must hold for national stability.

The fourth example, of the political opposition deceptively ignoring the raison d’etre of the national recount, as exemplified by the dictates of the forte of NUMBER 60 OF THE GAZZETTED ORDER, EMPOWERED BY ARTICLE 162 OF THE CONSTITUTION, is another beastly example of the citadel of fraud, as a normal guide for critical solutions to national affairs. It is an absolute defiance of one’s mental health in comprehending just how could such a signatory to a mechanism for determining credible votes, should subsequently decide to repudiate such findings, and uphold the initial tainted process, as what is legitimate.

Editor, the above are four significant and irrefutable examples that supports the fact of an anatomy of political opposition fraud, beginning with the NCM. This socio-political immorality, of course, having its genesis and growth during over two decades of degrading governance.

Regards
Carla Mendonca