WHY the PNC did not support the position of the three Opposition GECOM commissioners that GECOM is not ready and prepared to hold the 2025 General and Regional Elections?

The election is three months away, Guyana, thus is the middle of an election campaign period in which what political parties say and do can cost them.

Let’s look at the scenarios. If Mr. Norton had agreed with the three commissioners, then, it dents the credibility of the PNC.

This entire country knew two years ago that elections will not be beyond November 2025. GECOM knew this, and had to be in preparatory mode. For a political party to say that GECOM isn’t ready it can only be seen as a position of backing out.

It had to bring ridicule to the PNC, because Guyanese know that the election was going to be somewhere near the fourth quarter of the year, and for the PNC to agree that GECOM isn’t ready can only cause people to say that it is the PNC that isn’t ready.

So, what Norton logically did was to announce that the PNC was always ready, and in doing, so he has made his supporters confident.

What was the disadvantage in acknowledging that GECOM will be holding a general election that it is not fully equipped to conduct?

Your supporters will ask that you boycott the poll. You can’t expect them to sustain their faith in you when you are shouting from the rooftop that GECOM is in a shambolic state, yet it is conducting the election, and then you enter the contest.

The PNC never, even at the remotest level, had any intention of boycotting 2025. To boycott a legitimate election where the world can attest to its valid preparation is tantamount to self-erasure from politics. If the PNC boycotts the 2025 election, it will die a natural death.

So why did the three Opposition make the comical and absurd claim that GECOM isn’t ready? Because, without consulting the opposition parties, but particularly the PNC, the gang-of-three thought that they were handing the PNC something to fight with; make a fuss in the country that GECOM isn’t being straightforward, and you have a stratagem to create instability.

It did not work, because the gang-of-three provided the PNC with a flawed strategy. The PNC’s acceptance of participating in the election has left the gang-of-three in a complete state of confusion. The big question that was on the minds of Guyanese was what are the three commissioners going to do now?

It was the hope that whatever Vincent Alexander, Charles Corbin, and Desmond Thomas came up with in GECOM was not silly like the lack-of-preparation excuse that was tossed aside.

All Guyanese were just waiting to hear what the next move is of these three men. Persons were curious if they would create episodic mischief in the three months to come, but it will not affect the integrity of GECOM’s work.

This election is going to be characterised by two colossal features: It will be monitored by a substantial amount of foreign observers, and every aspect of the election is going to be shaped meticulously, so as to appear transparent.

It is going to be a circus if any opposition party finds fault with GECOM’s operations. People are going to laugh at them and say that they can’t get votes, so they go on a sour-grapes cry.

Now, interestingly, the PNC and AFC the past two months have not behaved as if they detect anything wrong with GECOM. The past two months, all the PNC and AFC have been consumed with is the coalition configuration between themselves and the choice of a consensus candidate.

Surely, if two months ago, the PNC and AFC had detected that things were going astray with GECOM, the commonsensical thing was to concentrate on GECOM, because a flawed GECOM renders useless any discussion of coalition politics, because you have to fix GECOM first before you can have an election.

But since 2024, when Nigel Hughes became leader and the AFC popularised Hughes then Terrence Campbell as the consensus candidate, the talk between these two parties have been about the choice of the presidential man.

How come, all of a sudden the election we all expected is upon us, and the three opposition commissioners were talking lack of preparation? I think the gang-of-three is so embarrassed that the nation may not hear from them before September.

This analysis was done before the GECOM decision to approve the work plan for the September 1 election.

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.