The Attorney-General’s letter is good education material

Nov 18, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – In my column yesterday, I once more pleaded for the need for people to expose fictions that are found in the mainstream media and social media that are designed to deceive people and play with their minds.

These abominable intentions should be confronted once they raise their ugly heads. The promulgation of the accusation of the bloated electoral roll as a mechanism to rig an election is a barefaced invention that cannot stand up to even elementary reasoning muchless academic analysis.

In a fine letter of confronting this sinister political stratagem, the Attorney-General’s letter in yesterday’s edition of this newspaper makes for enlightened reasoning. His letter appeared on Thursday morning but the night before, Jerry Gouveia explained on the Gildarie-Freddie Kissoon Show how the mechanism of continuous registration began and the role of the private sector is bringing it about.

Mr. Gouveia’s contribution is excellent historical description which no Guyanese interested in democracy should miss. Please go to Youtube and you will see a logical presentation by Mr. Gouveia of how the bloated list exclamation is pathetic nonsense.

Why should it be left to the AG, a man terribly busy to expose these consistent fallacies? There are countless educated minds in and out of Guyana that know that a huge number of names on the electoral list cannot translate into tampering when the voting procedure is backed by a large number of safeguards?

One of these safeguards is polling agents from all parties. The incumbent party, the APNU+AFC had polling agents in every station on Election Day in March 2020. It is and will remain impossible for thousands of impersonators to vote. The Guyana’s election system does not allow for such loopholes.

Here are the points in the AG’s letter that makes for a learning experience:

1- Continuous registration which the PNC agreed to simply has an inbuilt system whereby when you reach over 18, your name is transferred to the electoral roll.

2- The term “bloated” is pregnant with subliminal and overt influences. It is a deceitful word used to play with people’s mind. It denotes illegal action. The list is not bloated. It consists of names that were legally placed there and cannot be removed by law. The numbers appear large because of the smallness of Guyana’s population.

3- The numbers on the list consist of perambulating Guyanese who cross over from North America to Guyana and back with increasing frequency. What happens then is Peggy Smith is on the voter’s list but gone to New York.

You cannot deny Smith the right to vote because she is in New York and you have to take her name off the list. If at election time, she is not in the country then she does not get to vote. End of story. Smith not voting because she is away is the identical situation with the gold mining labourer who lives in Kitty but was in the interior on voting day.

Propagandists with an agenda to destroy Guyana then argue that there are thousands like Smith and people will vote for them. This is impossible as Jerry Gouveia explained given the ubiquitous protective instruments including the eyes of the parties’ polling agents.

It is a scientific impossibility for 5000 Guyanese in Guyana to have possession of five 5000 ID cards of registered Guyanese who are in the diaspora. You cannot vote for the absentees because you have to look like them and you have to completely dissolve the indelible ink on your finger.

4- Names cannot be removed from the list so it is absolutely stupid to fault the ruling party for benefiting from a huge list when it did not put them there. They came on the list because of continuous registration. The law does not allow for removal of registered voters.

5- Plenty names on a list are a common feature in the Caribbean but it does not lead to fraud. The AG did not mention Barbados. It has an electoral roll with more names on it than the population, according to UWI political scientist and pollster, Peter Wickham.

The ruling party in Barbados won two elections with that list. The other contestant in both elections did get even one seat. There have been no accusations against Mia Mottley, the PM of Barbados of rigging the elections. The APNU+AFC won the 2015 election and 2016 and 2018 Georgetown and New Amsterdam municipal polls with the same 2020 list.

Finally, the AG laments the silence of civil society groups in joining the debate about the use of the fictional term, “bloated” list. But that should come as no surprise to decent Guyanese.

(The views expressed in this articles are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.) 

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