–Attorney-General

ALL legal and administrative screws that are loose will be tightened to ensure that attempts at electoral fraud are dealt with condignly.
This is according to Attorney-General and Minister of Legal Affairs Mohabir Anil Nandlall, who was at the time speaking during a programme on NCN titled “Assault of Democracy-Never Again” that was aired recently.
Kaieteur News Editor, Ruel Johnson, and columnist, social activist and commentator Freddie Kissoon were also part of the discussion that looked back at the attempts to rig the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections.
Noting that electoral reform will manifest itself in two forms, the Attorney-General said that while one will be the constitutional reforms that require a two-thirds majority, “the riggers will not support reforms to make the process transparent, because they are hoping for another opportunity to thief the elections”.
He said that 90 per cent of the electoral reforms can be done by a simple majority, and in giving an example, he said all Statements of Poll (SOPs) made public will be uploaded to a website for all Guyanese to view.

“All the weaknesses in the law that they exploited are still fresh in our minds, so we have a tabulation of them. I have already begun the exercise, and a unit has been established. And we are working towards correcting them, and, hopefully, we will correct them before Local Government Elections,” the Attorney-General said.
He noted that all the necessary amendments to the laws will be made before the next general elections.
Further, he said that systematically, everything will be checked in detail, and all the loose screws will be tightened.
Emphasising that March 2, 2020 and its aftermath was a defining moment in the country’s history, Nandlall said, “We as a people did not succumb to those who wanted to destroy this country, using race, using violence, using fraud, sabotaging the electoral process and employing various methods.”
He said that all right-thinking Guyanese, CARICOM and the international community stood “on the side of freedom and democracy, and in the end we prevailed”.
It should also be noted that every delaying tactic was used by then President David Granger to stifle the democratic process.

TRAGIC AND BLATANT
What is even more tragic and blatant, Nandlall said, is the ability of the APNU+AFC representatives in the recent National Assembly to insult the intelligence of Guyanese.
“Every speaker on the side of the APNU+AFC stood in that [Parliament and told the Guyanese people that what they experienced subsequent to March 2 did not happen; that they did not attempt to steal the elections; that Mingo did not attempt to pervert the results; that Lowenfield did not attempt to pervert the results; that they are the victims of fraud; that they were robbed; that the PPP was the bad people. That is what they have been telling people all the time,” Nandlall emphasised.
He said when a major opposition party in a country continues to mislead their supporters, it says something about the caliber of their leaders.
“Everyone saw for themselves what transpired; it is recorded in permanent form, in video, in writing, in still pictures. And they are still telling a story out there that is completely the opposite of what people know what we experienced in this country; and they present themselves as a credible opposition,” the Attorney-General said.
Ruel Johnson, who is also the co-founder of The Citizen Initiative (TCI) party, said what occurred after March 2, 2020 was an attack on the fundamental structures of a country.

Johnson said laws are meaningless if any group of people can fundamentally ignore legal structures holding society together.
“There was a clear delineation of what is right and what was wrong; at that point and time, everybody who saw what took place and was not part of the then administration knew what was wrong; not just morally but what was basically procedurally wrong,” Johnson said.
GECOM, which was supposed to be a separate and independent entity from the Government, he said, was joining with politicians to manipulate reality to show a specific narrative. “The incumbent government at that time was signing off on that narrative; the basic machinery of an establishment of a democracy was under assault. At that point and time, it was not a question of whether we supported one side over the other; it was a matter of supporting what was right against what was blatantly wrong at a fundamental level,” the TCI cofounder said. Johnson said there were international interventions that the general public was not aware of as a result of the democratic crisis experienced in 2020.

All the international community wanted, he said, was for the laws and procedures to be followed, which meant they did not support the rigging of the elections.
“The electoral rules have to change towards greater transparency; there is no reason that at any point and time GECOM’s commissioners should not have had legitimate Statements of Poll to put in the public domain,” Johnson said.
He said that the SoPs are automatically made public after voting at the place of poll, and should never subsequently be placed under lock and key at GECOM.
He noted that electoral reform must also be tied to constitutional reform, resulting in less space for any indecency by politicians.
However, Freddie Kissoon said he hopes that leaders are focused on the beginning of a new horizon in which the State and its institutions will be used to serve all Guyanese.

Kissoon said a country with 70 per cent of its population under the age of 40 would not know what unelected power does to a county.
He said that the traumas experienced in the 60s, 70s and 80s “was like if your world was ending”.
“In 1968, I was a polling agent at St. Thomas Moore Primary School, and I saw what happened the night when polling was closed. I was 16 then; I was 26, I was 36, I was 46 and I saw what happened when I was 16, and you mean to tell me in 2020, a married man of 42 years, with a child in her late 20s, I had to go through that again!” Freddie reflected.

THE VULGARITIES
He said that after 1992 when the vulgarities of fraudulent elections in politics were thought to be over, it returned with a sharpness that would not have been encouraged by the majority of right-thinking Guyanese.
Kissoon said he made a pledge to himself to ensure that the country his daughter lives in will embrace democracy and not a dictatorship.
He said older persons and young persons who experienced the five months of trauma in 2020 decided that that should not have happened, and they guarded the ballot boxes to ensure its integrity and democracy prevails.

“I was very optimistic; I know this was a different opposition. There were 10 parties; this was not the passivism of Cheddi Jagan, and this is not the world as it was in the 60s, 70s and 80s; they were rigging this thing in a way that was an assault on the dignity of every human being,” Kissoon said.
He reflected that there were strong external forces telling the People’s National Congress (PNC) that their actions will not be tolerated.
“Mr. Granger did not originate the idea of a recount, and I am a 1,000 per cent sure of that; it was suggested to him by Mia Mottley through the Americans, and he knew it was a fait accompli, but he had thoughts in his head, and he said ‘Yes’,” Kissoon noted.

This, he said, caused the PNC much distress, and one of the party’s regional candidates, Ulita Moore, filed court proceedings, with the support of PNC lawyers to challenge the recount.
However, he said that after an arduous journey, democracy was achieved.
“I am satisfied that democracy has prevailed; I am satisfied that our votes have been counted,” he said, “but I am not satisfied we are out of the woods yet; we have to bring in a new landscape of electoral behaviour that is tightly legalistic.”