If there’s any doubt we live in a very troubled democracy, the war of attrition on electoral matters should serve as a salutary reminder. But at least both of the warring parties still assume it’s a “democracy” – even though one now frets we’re becoming an “emerging apartheid state”!! So, there’s hope, no?? So how do we nurture that hope so we can have a REAL democracy – like in Britain, where they’ve changed FOUR Prime Ministers in four months?!! Aren’t there standards against which we measure ourselves??
Anyhow, we just had an appeal on an elections petition by the PNC/APNU thrown out by the CCJ. This was the one in which they claimed the order for the recount proposed by Granger was illegal! So – as the fruit of a poisoned tree – the elections couldn’t be determined by that process!! But the case wasn’t thrown out because the CCJ disagreed with them – but merely because they agreed with the Govt that the Guyana Court of Appeal didn’t have jurisdiction to hear the original appeal from the judgment of the CJ (ag) in the High Court!! And that judgement was because one of the parties to the action –Sanctimonious Gangster Granger himself – hadn’t been served notice in the stipulated time!!
Now, your Eyewitness gets it – the law is the law, and you gotta obey its rules. But jeez!! Isn’t that a tad harsh?? After all, this ain’t no garden variety case…this is about who rules the country for five years!! Shouldn’t SOME Court determine whether the Recount Order’s valid?? But all isn’t lost – there’s the second petition where the PNC asks what about all the anomalies – dead and emigrated voting?? Isn’t that ground for quashing the results??
Hopefully, we’ll find out before the next General Elections in 2025!!
But another sprouting democratic shoot is the final public consultations, next Tuesday, on changing the Registration of the Peoples’ Act (ROPA) that controls how our elections are conducted. From the moment Mingo started finagling with the votes on March 3rd, 2020 – till the PNC finally vacated Government in Aug 2020 – the PPP maintained that all the loopholes exploited by the PNC during those five months had to be closed!! The Opposition wants all sorts of bells and whistles added, but it ain’t gonna happen, since the Govt had already held wide consultations and received hundreds of submissions.
This ain’t gonna affect the next democratic shoot – the Local Government Elections scheduled for March 13, 2023. The AFC said it ain’t contesting because the list is “bloated” , but the PNC, which also raised that objection, is playing coy.
Clearly, it doesn’t want the PPP to control the Municipalities it dominates!! Wanna have its cake and eat it too!! Long live Democracy!!
…and ideological dogmas
Liz Truss’s fate – as the shortest serving PM in Britain’s long history – should be a cautionary take for all politicians – including those of our dear Midland!! Truss was a diehard supporter of the neo-liberal economic and political dogma introduced by Margaret Thatcher. As a young Tory, she and a group of neo-liberal diehards formed a group – 12 of whom she’d drafted into her Cabinet – that dedicated themselves to implementing their heroine’s dogma.
If Gorbachev saw the death throes of the communist experiment of left-wing dogma, Liz Truss will be forever associated with the death of its neo-liberal answer!! And what an ignoble death it’ll be, since it’ll bring down Britain to the level of the Third World it had created by draining the wealth of those nations to announce itself “Great” Britain!! In the history of the world, it’s the only nation to label itself thus!!
While your Eyewitness does admit to a tinge of schadenfreude, he wishes them well. For auld lang syne!!
…and mobilisation
The Local Government Elections (LGE) will be a test of Pres Irfaan Ali’s PPP full-court press to woo erstwhile supporters of the PNC into the PPP Camp. Even though not as polarising as National Elections, we should get a hint!!
