Free and fair elections

With the launching of their first “Grand Rally” on Sunday, October 02, at Albion, the PPP/C’s 2011 elections campaigns have definitively begun. When the elections are over, we would have completed the fifth “free and fair” elections since October 5, 1992. We are sure that the choice of October 2 for the launch of the PPP’s campaign was not coincidental: it was timed to remind all Guyanese of the fundamental break which October 5 represents in our political history.

And this is as it should be. Free and fair elections are the sine qua non of democracy. A democracy may aspire to more, but it cannot have less. The people of Guyana can be proud that a democratic tradition is now entrenched in our country: that is, government of the people, by the people and for the people. Free and fair elections cannot be taken for granted. The majority of adults today know of the cost of free and fair elections; that not so long ago, their ballots were for naught. For decades, the rigging of elections was the order of the day.

What free and fair elections establish is the “consent of the governed”. The people of our country will freely choose those who would be at the helm of the government to steer the ship of state for another five years. A government may make mistakes; some may stray from the principles on which they were elected; the people may simply believe that they want to see new faces; but unless there are free and fair elections, the people have no choice but to go along with the status quo – as occurred for 28 long years. But today, in Guyana, we all have a choice.

To make that choice, we inevitably have had to heed our history. There is the matter of the voters list, which in most democracies would occasion absolutely no comment. Today, even opposition parties have declared that the voters list for these elections is of a “higher standard” than before. This is important because, during the period of routine elections’ rigging, manipulation of the list was a stratagem for “gaming” the result. Voting by the dead was routine, and in one notorious instance, horses in England were enfranchised to vote in Guyana.

Counting of votes at the places of poll is another routine matter that is unremarked in other jurisdictions but is of great significance here. And this is so for the good reason that there was a time (1973) when soldiers swooped down on polling stations; snatched ballot boxes, and transported them to army headquarters at Camp Ayanganna, where they were sequestered and “counted”. According to the CIA, “The PNC apparently had expected to receive a large number of votes in its traditional Georgetown strongholds and initially had allowed a fair count in districts there. When early results showed a low voter turnout, the PNC called on the GDF to intervene.” It is on account of the aforementioned incident (which included the killing by soldiers of two civilians seeking to protect the ballot boxes) that the role of the army during elections is viewed with apprehension by large sections of the populace when it comes to free and fair elections.

The CIA Factbook exposes a searing irony about the army in the present elections: “The PNC’s increasing politicisation and subordination of the GDF disturbed many members of the officer corps. When some expressed a desire for military neutrality, PNC informants in the armed forces alerted Burnham to the dissension within the GDF. In August 1979, Colonel Ulric Pilgrim, the operational force commander, and Colonel Carl Morgan, a battalion commander, were dismissed. Pilgrim and Morgan had been two of the most popular officers in the GDF. Burnham appointed a PNC loyalist, Colonel David Granger, commander of the GDF, who is now the presidential candidate of the PNC/APNU”. One cannot ignore the history of the former administration, and the role it played in suppressing a fundamental right of all Guyanese, the right to free and fair elections. This is paramount as the electorate prepares to elect their new leader to continue the spirit of harmony, unity and the development trajectory that this country has embarked upon 19 years ago.