…votes?
No…your Eyewitness hasn’t suddenly woken up on Planet Bizzaro after Arrival Day. He doesn’t think that just because the GECOM Secretariat employees reflected on the travails of their forefathers and foremothers, they’ll suddenly have an attack of integrity to do the right thing. Nah…even as they were being hired back in the day by Lowenfield, they’d been vetted for the willingness to bend their conscience. So what if they took an oath to ensure that: “each of your actions should reflect the highest standards of Integrity; Neutrality; Transparency; and Fairness.
He knows Guyanese are about to get “cocked” – he just doesn’t know exactly how. One fella told your Eyewitness that what’s gonna happen at a crucial point in the counting is each worker’s gonna suddenly start coughing. Yes – coughing. Fella figures with COVID-19 in the air, (literally) that should clear that Convention Centre faster than the bomb threat at Ashmin’s!
When pressed as to why he felt this was the way the recount will be “cocked”, fella asked whether your Eyewitness hadn’t listened to Patterson’s reason for not supporting the live-streaming. Seems that the AFC-now-PNC insider claimed if the workers’ faces are shown to the public, they’d be in danger. Now why would some folks who’re just counting ballots be in danger? your Eyewitness asked. And the answer came: ‘cause they’d be “cocking” the count!
But your Eyewitness doesn’t think the riggers will go that route. Why? Too obvious. But it just goes to show what the Guyanese public think of this elite bunch in the Secretariat who’ll be deployed for this recount. They’re the SEALS of the Secretariat – well-honed rigging machines!! Another theory is that the ballot boxes were already switched with others stuffed with PNC ballots. Like what happened in ’73 after the Army took the ballot boxes to Ayanganna. But here again, this seems too far-fetched. And hadn’t those fearless Guardians of Democracy been guarding those containers??
What your Eyewitness think will happen is more prosaic and the trained Rigging Seals won’t have to be called in. They’ve already done the dirty when they came up with those 19 rules that have to be followed for each ballot box. They will actually be conducting an AUDIT rather than a recount and the PNC will go to the courts to reject the results in toto!!
So you say (incredulously) hasn’t the PNC been calling for an audit?! Well, after the 1997 elections, they went to court to annul the elections because of IDs being required. Never mind, they’d solemnly voted for that requirement in the National Assembly.
And guess who ruled for them? Go to the head of the class, Dear Reader:
Claudette Singh!!
…slights to the Carter Center
Over the past months, ever since the question of observers came up, your Eyewitness has been emphasising how visceral was the hatred for that organisation in the bosoms of the Burnhamites in the Administration. Yes, hatred! Remember Hamilton Green’s – who’d been OR’d and pensioned by Granger for the slights they’d both suffered at the hands of Desmond Hoyte – reaction? The old rigger reminded the country that the Carter Center’s located where folks who looked like him were lynched a century ago!! Talk about holding grudges!
But the bitterness was actually because the Carter Center had braced their bête noir Hoyte to resist their pressures for the 1992 election to be rigged at the last moment when it was clear the PPP was winning. They knew the Carter Center wasn’t going to fall for their identical ploy three decades later.
More than any other signal by the PNC, denying the Carter Center permission to return tells us that what’s going down at the Convention Centre. It’s just a big “’cock”.
Will the US go along?
…Arrivals
First came the Portuguese, then the Indians and the Chinese in that order to join the Africans and Whites. Arrivals all, who found the Indigenous Peoples.
So, apart from them, we’re all arrivistes!
