…to rig
Like Freddie Krueger, GECOM Chairwoman’s insistence to merge the data from the aborted, unverified (by the Opposition) H2H data into the old Revised List of Electors (RLE), just keeps popping up like some horrible nightmare for Guyanese citizens. If it were just for some cheap thrill at the movies, your Eyewitness wouldn’t mind – folks actually pay to have the bejesus scared out of them! – but does the Iron Lady – as she insists on being called – realise what she’s doing to the reputation of our country when it finally has the attention of the world.
What’s the point of the Secretariat now making 91,000 changes to the RLE at the eleventh hour? Create a new variant of the old joke about “How many Trinis does it take to change a lightbulb”?? With $5 billion spent – and counting – over the course of almost two years, we still cannot create a credible voting list for a nation of 750,000 souls; what does this say about us?? But we know it was never just a matter of creating a credible list, don’t we?
The list was always just another arrow in the quiver of the PNC’s rigging repertoire – and you can bet your bottom dollar THAT’S the method behind the seeming madness we’ve been witnessing. And it all comes back to that inexplicable decision on the H2H. If, as even the CEO of GECOM admitted, a Claims and Objections (C&O) on a Preliminary List of Electors (PLE) extracted from the National Register of Registrants (NRR) would’ve been as credible as any new list produced from the H2H – and in fact had produced the list for the LGE – why did Madame Chair want to muddy the waters?? At the time, some thought she wanted to give each “side” something: for the PPP, abort the H2H; for the PNC, retain the cooked-up data (empty lots?) on 270,000 names collected by their operatives (and GECOM cohorts!) up to the time of the abortion.
So, where does this leave us with forty days to elections? The onus – once again – lands on the PPP to check out the implications of the 91,000 changes – details of which GECOM grudgingly accepted they’ll provide to the Opposition, after the story – and a firestorm of protests – erupted when the story broke! The PNC Commissioners have no problem with these never-ending irruptions over the voters’ list. Why should they?? They know that out of the chaos, their appointees in the elections arena, from the Returning Officers down to the GECOM IT department – will be restoring an “order” that returns the PNC to power!!
For instance, many PNC supporters will claim they were “disenfranchised” with their names not on the list.
And Volda’s “vigilant night shift” will ensure they vote!!
…at Whim
Unlike Ramjattan who just plain refused to return to his home village of No 47, to address a PNC scheduled meeting – knowing that he’d be addressing the village donkeys, at best, Moses Nagamootoo took a different tack. He arranged for PNC- supporters – read Afro Guyanese – from the surrounding villages all the way to New Amsterdam, to be bused in in their green uniform and their waving PNC flags!!
Not only was there not a single villager in the “rent-a-crowd”, he couldn’t even find two persons to don a yellow T-shirt to signal the AFC was anything but Dead Meat, in Berbice!! You could tell Nagamootoo was livid. To the 4000 sugar workers whom he’d promised in 2015 the estates would NEVER be closed, Nagamootoo now screamed that the said estates were “USELESS” and had to be closed!!
And to complaints that the NDC hadn’t picked up garbage, he burst out: “Nagamootoo Mumma Man (nasty slang language for “father”) na vote fuh dem, is you Whim people put dem deh!!”
His pension is secure!!
…on Granger’s health
In another sign of their rejection of the norms of democratic societies, PNCites insist that Granger’s health is a taboo subject?? Shouldn’t folks be concerned – especially when they notice he has to use helicopters for out-of-town meetings?
