Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Dec 12, 2011 Letters
Dear Editor,
GECOM’s dilly-dalliance in releasing the final election results and in giving APNU the handwritten original SOPs much earlier when asked, contributed to the unnecessary street protests that triggered police firing rubber bullets and pellets.
How does GECOM now go about extricating itself from conspiratorial theories of deliberate delays and the continued questionable relevance of the Private Sector Commission’s influence to the voting process almost two weeks after November 28 elections?
Were it not for APNU’s request for a reconciliation of the SOPs, I would never have given the final results a second thought, because the four contending parties appeared to agree initially with the results, and APNU and AFC candidates met with the winning candidate, who was publicly sworn in without protest.
But as the party with the second highest number of votes cast, APNU has a legitimate right to demand a reconciliation of the SOPs, and GECOM has a duty-bound responsibility to acquiesce to the demand as quickly as possible. GECOM is there to serve all contesting parties, not pick and choose who it will help.
When the PPP demanded a recount, even though the final results were not declared, and APNU and the AFC said they would not be part of the recount request, GECOM said it would proceed with the PPP’s request with or without APNU or the AFC’s input. No recount was done because the PPP subsequently withdrew its request, but GECOM was eager to undertake the recount immediately.
So when APNU requested a reconciliation of the SOPs after the final results were declared, the least GECOM should have done was to honour the request immediately by making the original handwritten SOPs available to all three of the new parliamentary parties and have a reconciliation exercise done in their presence.
Instead, GECOM’s dalliance led to APNU’s protesting and demonstrating, and it was only after the police fired rubber bullets at unarmed protestors who presented no clear and present danger to the police or the public, and after the Private Sector Commission called on GECOM to grant APNU its request, that GECOM finally agreed. Even then it turned over the requested SOPs in DVD rom (read only memory) format.
Now, the questionable actions of the trigger-happy police and the more deeply troubling influence of the pro-PPP Private Sector Commission over GECOM aside, how can anyone miss the similarity between GECOM’s delay in releasing the SOPs to APNU and GECOM’s delay in releasing the final results after polls closed on November 28, that some now see as deliberately in favour of the PPP?
Editor, over in Russia, multiplied thousands are protesting the alleged rigging of results of that country’s recent parliamentary elections, which voters there said they voted overwhelmingly in because of massive government corruption under Medvedev and Putin. At the time of this writing, clashes between police and protestors were void of gunfire, and I am not even sure those people had to apply for permits to protest.
GECOM has long been known to be a public institution that is supposed to be politically independent, but has been caught in the grips of the political influence of the government of the day, thus causing it to appear inept as it prepared to execute national elections every five years for less than half a million voters. GECOM truly has now come to resemble an arm the PPP and its corrupt government: lacking in credibility and transparency.
But did GECOM actually rig the 2011 elections in favour of the PPP or were there glaring discrepancies but GECOM was too embarrassed to admit and correct them? This question does not come easy for me, because despite all the signs of ineptitude, I held out hope that Dr. Steve Surujbally would run an above-board institution and the final results would reflect the will of the people. In fact, I thought that the entire process would be so above-board that GECOM would be able to readily facilitate any party with a question/request without hesitation.
No one really knows if the reconciliation exercise will change the final results, but at least the public’s growing perception of GECOM being in cahoots with the PPP or engaging in skullduggery would have been halted and changed.
Editor, I am not an APNU supporter, but strongly support APNU’s right to street protests in the face of GECOM’s intransigence. I also would have liked to see APNU coupled its street protests with approaches to the court to add legal muscle to its voice of dissent.
Meanwhile, I would also like to suggest that APNU victims shot by the police seriously consider civil suits against the Police Force and the government. The police are there to protect and serve, not harm unarmed civilians engaging in a peaceful, even if illegal, street protest.
As for the pro-PPP PSC, it should never be allowed to offer help during the election process or to influence GECOM on post-election related matters. I never read where the PSC ever offered to help the police go after the thieves in government or the crooks that received state funds for questionable contracts and benefited from state resources. Why?
I wish it would cease and desist from intruding into the elections arena – the domain of voters, and instead pay attention to its own house that has quite a few straight-up ‘hustlers’ posing as businessmen who need to be audited by an impartial GRA to ascertain their sources of wealth.
Emile Mervin
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