GUYANA seems perennially to be held under siege by the PNC and its affiliates – past and present– especially pre, during and post elections.
The world saw key players in GECOM blatantly attempting to circumnavigate Guyana’s constitutional diktats in every conceivable way to give the APNU+AFC victory over the People’s Progressive Party and its civic partner (PPP/C), which both Statements of Poll (SoPs and Statements of Recount (SoRs) showed had won the General and Regional elections of March 2, 2020 with a significant majority.

However, the PNC-led coalition was not prepared to accept those results and the world saw GECOM’s management and staffers begin a series of machinations intended to deny the PPP/C its electoral victory and illegally re-install the coalition parties in government, with Granger as de facto president; and it all began with Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo, who reconfigured the numbers on the Region Four SoPs to give the APNU+AFC success by inflating the coalition’s numbers and decreasing the PPP/C’s numbers.

The tragi-comedy farce enacted over five months subsequent to the elections as PNC leaders held private meetings with GECOM heads and great latitude was allowed GECOM CEO Keith Lowenfield as he delivered one erroneous report after the other and questionable protracted delays in the process, opening windows for PNC members filing a series of frivolous and vexatious cases, while coalition supporters ran amok in intimidating scenarios, all caught on camera; even as the deadly COVID-19 epidemic was sweeping the country and people were going hungry all over the country.
Eventually, the GECOM chair was backed into a corner after the world powers and CARICOM took a firm stance – uphold democracy, or else.
During the five months preceding Dr Irfaan Ali’s swearing-in as President, the nation endured an unrelenting agony; even coalition supporters who were being fed lies and being hyped-up into violent modes and aggressive moods by their leaders.

And the nation demanded of their new government that the open electoral fraud that made citizens of every community suffer so much be brought to justice; so, in accordance with the law, the Guyana Police Force (GPF), acting within their remit, began arresting perpetrators, including Mingo.
This apparently terrified the intellectual authors behind the multiplicity of electoral frauds by GECOM managers and staffers, videos of which were widely circulated on social media; so they are seemingly attempting to obfuscate their criminal actions by rallying their supporters into their usual post-elections violence and destruction, trying to blackmail government into withdrawing the charges brought against Mingo. It is quite likely that the intellectual authors are afraid that Mingo will expose their complicity in the schemes designed to derail the elections and allow a swearing-in of Granger. Hence, this rallying of their troops to create mayhem in the country.

The protest action on the East Coast highway by coalition supporters greatly endangered protesters who are vulnerable to coronavirus infection and affected the social and commercial life of commuters who traverse that highway.
This action was reminiscent of when the PNC lost the elections in 1992: they set fires, destroyed infrastructure and attacked and robbed individuals and businesses. They did the same in 1997, in 2001, and again in 2020 after they tried unsuccessfully to steal the elections. Citizens are fearful that the violence and destruction will escalate.

Post-1992 elections, the new government invested all its time, energies and resources into trying to put Guyana back on its socio-economic track, because the needs of the people were paramount and extant in urgent ways in every sector.

It was a Herculean task to even put a dent in the then countrywide devastation that the PNC had left in this country; but their destructive rampages, through Hoyte’s “slo’fiah, mo’ fiah” strategy, that razed dozens of businesses, destroyed private and public properties, with innocent citizens, especially entrepreneurs, and policemen being wantonly robbed and slaughtered, forced the government to curtail developmental imperatives and bend to the opposition’s will, as Dr. Cheddi Jagan was forced to do with Duncan Sandys when the nefarious ‘X-13 Plan’ was unleashed on his people.

Member states of CARICOM which had shared a ‘cordial relationship at heads-of-state level with Forbes Burnham, and at the governmental level with the PNC — although it was widely known that the PNC was keeping itself in power through rigged elections, combined with internal terrorism — never once, during that legendary and infamous 28 years of despotic PNC rule, intercede to provide support to Dr. Jagan’s just cause; but their intercession when the PNC was on its “slo’ fiah, mo’ fiah” rampage was mainly on the PNC’s behalf, and forced concessions inimical to the PPP/C administration, which, again, as in the Duncan Sandys farce, was forced to make concessions inimical to its own interests, such as truncating its term in office by two years.
Consequent to these concessions, the 1999-2001 broad-based Constitutional Reform Commission and the resulting constitutional reforms were unanimously agreed by the parliamentary political parties through an extensive, inclusive consultative process that included communities across the 10 administrative regions, and civil society.

This was then followed by an intensive parliamentary reform process (2002-2006) which created an expanded committee system, and enhanced oversight of all facets of government, supported by revised Standing Orders in both 2006 and 2011. Thus was created one of the best parliamentary models in the world, which gave the parliamentary opposition great sway and great say in the governance of the country, especially in its economic affairs, through the Public Accounts Committee, the permanent chair of which the government conceded to the opposition, even when the PPP/C had the majority in parliament.

However, the current CARICOM construct, headed by the courageous, impartial ethical Madame Mia Motley, stood up and strongly rallied behind the Guyanese faction fighting for democracy to prevail in Guyana and AG Anil Nandlall is adamant that the current PPP/C government will not allow itself to be blackmailed; and that those who collaborated in attempts to steal the 2020 elections will have to face the full brunt of the law.