The Vaseline moment when spreadsheet became bedsheet

Mar 13, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – Exactly two years ago, on this date, this country returned to archaic, sad, Draculean days in the long past when events at the head office of the Guyana Election Commission were a re-enactment of the night of long knives of 1968, 1973, 1978, 1980 and 1985.
It wasn’t only that the elections in those years were rigged. It was the external dimensions of the fraud. Opposition supporters were killed and beaten up. The police and the army secured the elections for the PNC under Forbes Burnham and in 1985 for Desmond Hoyte.
Each of those four elections, including the 1978 referendum, fear, violence and mayhem punctuated the landscape of Guyana. No one who lived through those fiery ordeals ever wanted to see those human bestialities again as they moved from youth into middle age and in advanced age.
The sordid image returned to Guyana on March 13, 2020 and a nation once more stood facing the abyss of doom. Before we describe the Vaseline moment in the history of election insanities, let me define the Caribbean slang word, “pampasett.” It means to be noticeable in a gesticulating way but there is no substance to your action. In fact, your action is just a show that should not be given any attention by serious people.
After the five-month election fiasco, a number of Guyanese in the diaspora and at home began attacking the government on the issue of transparent, accountable, inclusive governance. The sermons started after Dr. Irfaan Ali was sworn in and hasn’t stopped up to this day.
There is nothing wrong and everything right about individuals and organisations holding the government accountable. It preserves democracy, generates a culture of debate and provides knowledge to the population. Any government must be under the watchful eye of the media and civil society. Guyana must not be different.
But there must be the expression of patriotism and the need to speak up when the society is threatened. This is what is expected of the citizenry. What we have in this country since the swearing in of Dr. Ali are questionable people looking for publicity and pampasetting themselves while unwilling to discuss, muchless concede, what happened from March to July 2020. My classification of this type of societal actor is “the usual suspects.”
Here is what happened on this day March 13, two years ago. The acting Chief Justice (CJ) on March 11 ruled that the Returning Officer (RO) for Region Four must use the statement of polls (SOPs) to arrive at the results. Days before, spreadsheets were used that did not reflect what was on the SOPs. This should have brought the election controversy to an end.
The RO did not follow the CJ’s instruction and contempt of court writ was filed against him. The March 2020 election was about to conclude on March 13 at the head-office of GECOM in Kingston. What transpired there was the atavistic reversion to 1968, 1973, 1978, 1980 and 1985.
The RO moved his operation to GECOM’s head office on March 13. Just as in 1968, 1973, 1978, 1980 and 1985, state security hassled, humiliated and manhandled bone fide opposition delegates and candidates who had a legal right to be in the building. There are videos of government-supported thugs assaulting members of the media. Three journalists from KN reported the fear that overcame them.
This was history all over again. The RO used a defective projector, with a corrugated bedsheet and a piece of cardboard to highlight the SOPs. But the lens of the projector was deliberately smeared with Vaseline, according to Deputy Minister of Public Works, Deodat Indar, so the numbers were too vague to discern on the soiled bedsheet.
Then the RO did something else. In China, they have super trains that before using them, it took five hours to get from one part of China to the other. The trains reduced the time by four and a half hours. The RO put up and took down the SOPs faster than the super trains in China.
When you look at what happened to Jonathan Yearwood, one of the opposition candidates that afternoon in the GECOM building on March 13, it was déjà vu for all of us who are over our sixties. Accosted by a thug, in protecting himself, he was arrested by the police. On July 30, through the energy of the world, particularly the US Ambassador, Sarah-Ann Lynch, free and fair election and the legal results prevailed.
If I were to advise the government, I would tell them not even for a fleeting moment, they should accept, not even a five-minute, dialogue with the usual suspects. Any human that could criticise the government in 2022 but stayed silent from March to July 2020 is unfit for modern civilisation.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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