By Leonard Craig
Following the 2020 elections, I defended the coalition in earnest
AFTER every election there are accusations of some form of rigging or another. After every election, no matter how peaceful, no matter how incident free, it almost always attracts an election petition seeking to either overturn the results or to require fresh elections.

There were occasions where violent protests led to fires that razed, partially destroyed or interrupted entire city blocks, following the accusations of rigged elections.
So, when voting is closed after any election, as night follows day, there is a guarantee that accusations of rigging will be heard, especially from the party that lost. These accusations often inflame passions and deepen distrust for the electoral process.

Inside political parties there is a constant ethnic parley; the population gravitates.
So, when these accusations come, they manifest themselves in racial, we against them, overtones. The nation then descends into a trough of ethnically inflamed relations that can sometimes leave long-lasting scars on our psyche.

I am keenly aware of all these facts; I understand that it is hard for political parties to confront their supporters after crushing defeats. I also understand that in Guyana the easiest excuse is to say, “cheated not defeated,” we could’ve won if “they” did not rig.
The nature of this type of accusative dog whistling the object is almost never to provide proof of rigging, but to inflame passion among the clannish support base.

I was a member of the AFC following the 2020 elections and even though I have a more than average understanding of our electoral process, yet still, during that time, I found myself in the middle of defending the coalition for its actions following those elections. I ought to have known better.

I am a political activist and I acted in earnest, given the information available to me at the time. If one understands the way political campaigns work, activists operate in information silos and like soldiers, we defend our parties to death, Because of this, we sometimes end up fighting unjust ‘wars’. I put my head down and stridently defended my party. I did not have the luxury of a universal view. At that point, all I knew was that they were wrong and we were right, no time to pause and reflect.

Election reports that came to the command centre from Regions #3 and #5, suggested that there were major problems with the final tallying of votes, enough to overcome any perceived deficit in Region Four.
Any credible recount will yield hundreds, if not thousands, of additional votes for the Coalition that were not reflected in the official count. Based on the fact that Aubrey Norton had significant oversight of Region #3, I trusted that judgment.

He was credited with tremendous electoral experience and if anybody will be able to discern these things it would be him. So, I went to the Arthur Chung Convention Centre (ACCC) as party supervisor with one purpose: to sniff out every crooked count. In pursuit of this mission, I directly clashed with people like Juan Edghill and Robeson Benn, other politicians and some media personalities; I was never shy.

When the returns for Regions #3 and #5 came back, the identical tally of the previous declaration was confirmed. That was a sobering moment. I was there, I saw the recount and the verification for myself.
Being a supervisor, I was able to walk from one counting station to the next, I spoke to our scrutineers; I saw them object to the minutest of details in an attempt to get the count right.

I even observed how a particular scrutineer caused the GECOM staff to recount the entire contents of a ballot box they were about to reseal after a full recount, based on a minor observation.
I received news that a close friend with whom I interacted, was confirmed positive for COVID and I chose to take a few days off to get tested. Shaken by the results of Regions Three and Five, coupled with the testing days off, gave occasion to pause and reflect. This led me to a place where I lost confidence in the “win” claimed by the Coalition.

When I considered the general behaviour of the main party leaders (this for a future piece), my loss of confidence swelled. This led to my voluntary withdrawal from the recount process. Though tested negative for COVID, I did not return to the ACCC and was replaced by Jermaine Figueira.

After the results of Regions Three and Five were confirmed, I can remember confronting Raphael Trotman about the true results. He told me that he did not know for sure what the real results were. Principals in the PNC were handling the results and AFC was not kept in the loop, but the little he knew suggested a win for the Coalition.

He said his own view was that there is so much that had gone wrong with the election results, neither party should govern using them. He believed that demands for an end to the recount and holding of fresh elections, would not be unreasonable.

In the intervening period, some sort of power sharing or power-limitation arrangement could be worked out under extension of the process already initiated by CARICOM. I had already held this belief and as I canvassed the views of many others from the AFC leadership, activists and ordinary members, this was a popular view. Neither the PNC nor PPP, for different reasons, would have any part of it.

During my last day at the ACCC, I can recall chatting with Sase Gunraj and I put that said view to him and he was adamant that the winner must be seated before there is any consideration of any other factors. I confessed to him that based on what I saw from Regions Three and Five, I was really disappointed and no longer confident about the righteousness of the Coalition’s endeavours. He told me he understood that as an activist (a worker ant) my other instincts were sedated.

He intoned that he detected sincerity in my intentions and entreated me to review the entire process dispassionately. I had already begun to do so. More on this later.
In conclusion, consider this: the Coalition presided over the intelligence-gathering machinery of the state, over which they had direct command; a handpicked Commissioner of Police, deep loyalty in the hierarchy of the army, a lenient elections commission, all the vast resources of the state under its direct control; at least half a dozen high-ranking former intelligence officers and former heads of multiple branches of the armed forces directly involved in the administration etc, etc, etc .

I came to this one conclusion: any government that holds power under those circumstances and claim that the opposition rigged its way into power ought to never be allowed to govern again, on account of gross incompetence.

Given how elections are conducted in Guyana, to rig an election involving 15,000 votes (that the PPP won by) would require collaboration among hundreds of people spanning several areas across the country and major logistics chains; yet, the coalition had no knowledge until after the “rigging” was successfully completed.

This is an admission that the coalition was incompetent in its management of the security forces and incompetent in ensuring its own survival and protecting its own interest.
The entire raison d’etre of political parties is to gain and preserve power, and if a party holds power and cannot detect and quash such an elaborate national scheme to depose it, that party does not deserve to govern.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.