MY main interest was how the PPP did in Linden, New Amsterdam, and Georgetown in LGEs 2023. I was concerned about the fate of President Ali because my analysis of the nature of his rule leads me to believe he is going to end up joining the category in which lies Cheddi Jagan’s legacy.

Earlier Tuesday morning, I called a reliable friend in New Amsterdam, then such a person in Linden and a close PPP personality. By Tuesday morning, I knew what the results were in those three places. Irfaan Ali was safely on his journey of destiny. It meant that PPP, PNC and media people knew the results.

Vice-President Jagdeo called a press conference. He set it after lunch because I presume he knew what he was going to say, untold numbers, especially media people knew already – the PPP enjoyed handsome, ethnic cross-over votes.
I am contending that before it went to press for its Wednesday, June 24 edition, the Stabroek News (SN) had to know the phenomenal multi-racial ballots the PPP picked up in Georgetown. Yet in that edition, on the front page, SN screams, “APNU wins easily in Georgetown.” That was not factual. It was misleading. It was politicized, deceptive journalism, maybe even vulgar. There was complete ignorance of the meaning of what context is to life.

Professional journalism would have put it this way; “APNU retains Georgetown but suffers losses.” In the context of two fundamental factors, we will show that there was no easy win for APNU in Georgetown.
1– Georgetown has historically been PNC territory with as recent as 2016, the PPP had just two seats. 2- ethnic voting has been to the disadvantage of the PPP in Georgetown. Here now are the occurrences on Tuesday morning that cannot support the headline of the SN that APNU easily won in Georgetown. 1- the PPP won the constituency of the PNC’s incumbent mayor and the constituency of the PNC’s incumbent deputy mayor. To add to this, the deputy mayor is the deputy leader of the PNC’s Georgetown group. 2- The PPP won five more seats in Georgetown.

Where did those votes come from? It is safe to assume that the PPP picked up four more seats in the 2018 LGEs, coming from particular areas where there are safe PPP enclaves? We can list Kitty, Alexander Village, Cummings Lodge, La Penitence. Where in Georgetown did the additional votes came from in 2023?

You do not need to be trained in political theory or sociology to know where. Those ballots were from traditional PNC voters who crossed over to the PPP, thus giving the PPP an additional 6000 ballots, thus giving the PPP a multi-racial umbrella.
How then, against these facts and this graphic reality, can a newspaper proclaim that APNU easily won in Georgetown? The entire headline is misleading and designed to obfuscate context. Interestingly, the major headline shouted out that, “Jagdeo claims massive victory in LGEs.” This was in reference to Mr. Jagdeo’s enunciation at his press conference that the PPP’s victory was massive.

Mr. Jagdeo went on to invite the media to see the PPP’s statements of poll (SoPs) and offered to set up a room downstairs at Freedom House to host the exercise. Anyone with an interest in LGEs 2023 knew that the PPP would have won because of the large number of no-contest decisions in many areas by the PNC. The curiosity of Guyanese was how the PPP would do in the traditional strongholds of the PNC — Georgetown, New Amsterdam and Linden. The media was given an opportunity to see the SoPs. Journalists should have grasped the opportunity and perused the SoPs of those three areas listed above.

How many SoPs were there for Georgetown that would have taken the journalists a day and a half to examine? In fact, there were a mere 34, 507 ballots. So on that Tuesday afternoon, if journalists had taken up Mr. Jagdeo’s offer, they would have known the Georgetown results. The question is, did SN know the results by Tuesday afternoon, yet went ahead with the cry of “APNU wins easily in Georgetown?” Contextually, APNU did not win smoothly in Georgetown and its losses are a harbinger of things to come. In a forthcoming column, I will describe evil ignorance when a man who writes a daily letter in the Kaieteur News (KN), Stabroek News and Demerara Waves, an outfit he owns, (and he is closely connected to the two newspapers), yelled out that the PPP did badly and that the results show the PPP has to fear for the future. This man says he is a devoted Catholic. Maybe God needs to teach to read figures.