ELECTION RESULTS


The last general and regional elections were characterized be extensive delay in announcing election results and there was an outcry against it. International observers commented unfavourably about the delay and recommended an earlier announcement of the results. It remains an issue which has not yet been resolved. It is surprising that there has not been no been review of the basis on which results are declared. I wrote about it before carried in SN on 26 January 2014 (“Election Results”).

In a report in SN on 15 January the Chairman of GECOM, Dr. Steve Surujballi is reported to have said in response to a call from the PPP for an earlier declaration of election results, that ‘while the commission will move expeditiously to declare the results of the upcoming General Elections it will not sacrifice accuracy to do so.’ Much the same sentiments were expressed in another statement quoted in another section of the press yesterday.

Continue reading “ELECTION RESULTS”

WHOSE SPANNER IN THE WORKS?


Working alongside and observing Dr. Jagdeo (then Mr. Jagdeo) at close range in the PPP for twenty years, I know that he must be enormously tickled at the controversy generated by the court action challenging the presidential two-term limit. He loves the attention and gets a thrill from everybody being confused. That he knew about it beforehand, I have no doubt. The several connecting links are there.

The last time Dr. Jagdeo’s name attracted public attention in relation to the presidency was on 20 and 21 March 2014. Reports were published in the Guyana Times and Guyana Chronicle, respectively, about a poll allegedly conducted by the Opposition, which the Opposition denied. The poll reportedly concluded that Dr. Jagdeo would have been the most popular presidential candidate for the 2011 elections. The PPP did not, at that time, appear to have been put out by the publication, and relations in the leadership were unaffected. Had President Ramotar put his foot down, as I had suggested, he would not have faced this problem today. I said at the time that Dr. Jagdeo was not going to stop (“The Jagdeo Challenge” SN 30/3/14). As I predicted, the issue surfaces again!

Continue reading “WHOSE SPANNER IN THE WORKS?”

VIRGIN TERRITORY.


Guyana is in virgin, unexplored, political territory. In various interviews both Opposition Leader, David Granger and AFC Leader, Khemraj Ramjattan, have indicated that the period of foreplay between their parties is over and consummation is in progress. The public awaits the end of the process to determine whether it has ended with an ecstatic bang or an unfulfilling whimper.

Upon past experience, a collaborative effort in Guyana’s politics requires certain sequential steps. The first and most important is to define the objective. The second is to agree on the programme. The third is to establish the leadership structure, one part of which will be the presidential candidate. The fourth is to decide how the seats will be apportioned, particularly if the alliance gets, together, more seats than the individual parties obtained in 2011. The selection of ministers should await the election results.

Continue reading “VIRGIN TERRITORY.”

ELECTIONS.


The election date has been announced. Because it is just under four months away, the campaign will start slowly. The political parties represented in the National Assembly have all worked with exceptional commitment since the 2011 elections. They all expected elections before the end of the five year term and have all tried to position themselves to make as big an impact as possible whenever it happened.

These are the most important elections since 1992 when the then PNC Government was voted out of office in the first free and fair elections since 1964. The 1992 elections, as we know, were won by the PPP/C. It has won the majority in three successive elections thereafter but only the plurality, forty eight percent, in the elections held in 2011.  The results of the 2011 elections exposed the PPP’s weaknesses after nineteen years in office and it has struggled since then with a minority government, which has had no achievements of substance to its credit.

Continue reading “ELECTIONS.”

PARIAH


No matter how often it happens, no matter how much our ears become attuned to the ring of abuse in politics, Guyanese must never allow themselves to become accustomed to it or to be entrapped by it, and to succumb to the temptation of silence. The degeneracy of political and personal abuse has become the hallmark of the PPP’s methodology of political discourse.

Unless it stops, it will intimidate most into silence. For the few who are remain courageous enough, they will have to live, as many now do, with a constant, daily, stream of invective about their public and private lives and activities that defies any sense of rationality or decency.  Little do the perpetrators understand that it is they, not the victims, who the degradation eventually consumes. Cheddi Jagan suffered a lifetime of humiliation and abuse. So intense it was, and over so many decades, that it tempted good people to say that history would not have been kind to him. The opposite has happened.   

Continue reading “PARIAH”