Latest update May 15th, 2024 12:59 AM
Mar 12, 2011 Editorial
The outside date for the holding the general election is December. However, President Bharrat Jagdeo could name a date much earlier. The Guyana Elections Commission says that it could be ready by mid-year.
All this is good news, especially this time around. There should be no contention over the voters’ list. The second house-to-house registration was duly completed in 2008 and the process of continuous registration has been progressing.
Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission, Dr Steve Surujbally, has said that the list is being sanitized continuously. People who would have died are immediately struck off as a result of the cooperation between the Elections Commission and the General Registrar’s Office.
Of course, there are people who have not got registered because they did not have the necessary documents, including proof that their births were registered. And some of those who have been duly registered are refusing to uplift the requisite identification cards. It is likely that many would be without the identification cards and will simply not be interesting in the vote. This is a feature each time elections come around.
There are many reasons why people refuse to vote. One of them has to do with the general confusion that accompanies the general election. People who are friends become enemies because they happen to be of different ethnic persuasions. Guyana’s politics is largely race based.
One would have expected that after nearly six decades of universal adult suffrage the nonsense would have been done away with as happened in Singapore, Malaysia and some other countries in the Asian rim. They too had their ethnic problems but they put those aside in the interest of national development. No politician sought to carp on past ethnic indiscretions.
Today those countries have reached levels that equate them with the developed world. But Guyana is steeped in its past. It keeps a firm grip on racial voting. In some cases these pleas are hollow in that the politicians make the statements about avoiding ethnic voting in public but they say something else in private.
Sometimes their public statements uttered in the heat of a speech come out all wrong. President Bharrat Jagdeo took an oath of office to serve all the people of Guyana without fear or favour, affection of ill-will. His government has undertaken development in every section of the country regardless of the ethnic composition of those communities.
Indeed, he has been accused of presiding over lopsided development, appearing to favour one ethnic group over another. The supporters would say that the focus is on under-development and that the administration is simply bringing those under developed communities up to the level of those already developed.
During certain exercises he would make on the spot decisions and release finance that the budget offers his office for such eventualities. But he is also prone to indiscretions.
On Sunday, President Jagdeo made it known that he was not happy that Brigadier David Granger had become the Presidential Candidate for the main opposition party. Unless there was some bad blood between them one cannot understand the vehemence. The head of state was so angry that he broke the golden rule of not inciting to race. He would deny this charge.
He was speaking to a crowd that was largely of East Indian ancestry and he was telling the elders not to shy away from informing the younger ones about things past. President Jagdeo has always been one to criticize people who insist on dwelling in the past. He not so long ago showed scant regard for some people whom he described as old and who he said, were stuck in the past.
To revert to a position that he had criticized is unusual, unless the President was demonstrating that he was from a school that preached the principle ‘Do as I say and not as I do’.
As he looked at the past he sought to blame Brigadier Granger for the shooting death of two protesters in 1973. The shooting occurred during the elections when the men tried to prevent the departure of ballot boxes. The president’s attack is most unusual. He has not been known to be so vehement against any other presidential aspirant.
Meanwhile, the widely held view is that President Jagdeo crossed the line. What a pity that he is immune from sanctions locally.
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