DURING the election disaster of 2020 (I refused to continue to use words like fiasco, imbroglio etc; they cannot describe the depth of the political chasm Guyana was facing), I did not refrain from my usual routine. So, I was jogging in the National Park where I encountered someone I knew well, a well-known African restaurant owner whose business I often patronised.
We began to talk about the election horror that was unfolding before the eyes of the world. He refused to denounce the rigging and told me he preferred a rigged election to Jagdeo returning to power.
Our argument became vociferous and I denounced him for equating Jagdeo with the nation of Guyana. I asked what happens then to free and fair elections. I asked him to explain how the ANPU+AFC came to power if it weren’t for the right of Guyanese to vote for whom they want to rule. We no longer speak. He sees me in the park, and we just pass each other. I couldn’t be bothered. I fought all my adult life for Guyana to have free elections and even at my age I will continue to do so.
On this very day, in 2020, one of the most dangerous reversions to horrible, Faustian times in Guyana occurred. On this day, June 23, 2020, Chief Election Officer (CEO), Keith Lowenfield, declared the results of the CARICOM supervised recount. This was Lowenfield’s declaration for the March 2020 election.
The CEO’s figure was arrived at based on a 2/1 split decision of the Court of Appeal (CoA) that only valid votes must be counted. Justice Brassington Reynolds and Dawn Gregory-Barnes voted for “valid votes only” while Justice Rishi Persaud dissented. The use of the term “valid” was another stratagem by the APNU and AFC to ensure that they stayed in power. No human could fathom what the CoA meant by valid votes since the March 2020 tabulation and the CARICOM recount used valid votes to arrive at the results.
Lowenfield used the CoA direction to remove 115, 844 votes that legitimately were counted in the March tabulation and the recount because they were the normal, legal, legitimate, valid votes you find in any election. The erasure of 115, 844 votes gave the PNC/AFC a majority of ballots. This humongous removal of votes was the second decision of the CEO.
He previously announced that the valid votes cast were 460, 352. In the second decision, he declared total votes of 344, 508. The numbers from the recount were 223,336 for the PPP giving that party victory. But when the CEO did his mumbo jumbo, the PPP ended up with 166, 343. According to the bogus figure of the CEO, the APNU+AFC won the election with 171, 825 votes.
On this date in 2020, these macabre things happened in Guyana that hundreds of thousands witnessed since the first rigged poll in 1968 and after. Now here is what I will ask all patriotic Guyanese in and out of the land to do. Go back to this day in 2020, and the days after and see if you can find even an infinitesimal utterance of condemnation of the most graphically rigged election in any country in the world by the following people who tell Guyanese that Guyana is not a democracy.
We must never forget these names. They have no right to be part of the future shape of this country. Guyana Human Rights Association; Transparency International –Guyana chapter; Red Thread; Help and Shelter; the Walter Rodney family; SASOD; Vanda Radzik-Veira; Danuta Radzik-Veira, Isaballe DeCaires; Nigel Westmass and his brother Yuri Westmaas; Eusi Kwayana; Alissa Ttotz and her column named “In The Diaspora”; Moses Bhagwan; Dr. Clive Thomas; Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine; Oil and Gas Governance Network; Dr. Bertrand Ramcharran who ought to know better since he was acting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; the anti-oil lobby that includes the amorphous group I refer to as The Usual Suspects.
I could go on but space would not allow for it. These names criticise the practice of democracy in Guyana and want us to either get out of oil production or renegotiate the ExxonMobil contract. Guyana much less oil would not have existed if we went over the chasm on June 23, 2020. I gave my entire life since I became a PPP polling agent in the first rigged national election in 1968 fighting with fellow Guyanese and into my advanced age I had to endure the horror of June 23, 2020.
And to think there are people in our midst who stood silent and refused to raise their voices on what happened to 115, 883 votes on this date in 2020. They are people we should de-recognise.
