…craziness
Your Eyewitness knew this record-breaking long count and recount were going to push some folks over the edge. But he never expected anyone to go batshit crazy like what evidently happened to Henry Jeffrey as he had to’ve suffered a meltdown while on a panel with his colleague from ANUG, Ralph Ramkarran and Bajan pollster Peter Wickham, while discussing the elections. Because the discussion was over the radio, your Eyewitness couldn’t actually see the faces of the panellists, but from the tone, he could tell that they expected Jeffrey to be immediately placed in straightjacket and committed to that facility in Berbice near the Canje Bridge!!
Yet even as they were pontificating, over at the ACCC, the long-suffering GECOM staff, Observers and other stakeholders were issuing the final CERTIFIED and VERIFIED recount numbers for Reg 4!! It was all over…after a hundred days, we were finally able to count just over 450,000 votes. But guess what?? Jeffrey effectively endorsed what his partner David Hinds had suggested a couple of weeks ago – to burn the ballots and introduce shared governance!!
His version of the proposal was that GECOM shouldn’t do what it’s statutorily commanded to do –- have Lowenfield just total up the ten Certified recounts and present the final number of votes for each party to the Commission. But the Commission should immediately go to the Chancellor of the Judiciary. “Why,” you ask? What’s the issue over which GECOM needs judicial intervention or guidance?? Is it about some other mathematical conundrum in the political realm like the one the Chancellor last decided – that 33 wasn’t the majority of 65?? After all, the recount does deal with numbers!!
Nah…it was nothing like that. All Jeffrey wants is that the Commission should ask the Chancellor to take over the running of the country!! She should then call the PPP and PNC together and have them work out a power-sharing arrangement for the next 18 months and THEN call for new elections!! His fellow ANUG co-founder Ralph Ramkarran could only mutter incredulously as to under what authority GECOM could do all of that!
So, the question arises…what the heck were these elections all about?? GECOM didn’t need for us to shell out over $8 billion and counting – not to mention all the nail-biting by the Guyanese populace for over three months.
And why would the elections after the 18 months be any different from this one?? Jeffrey thinks the list will be “debloated”. Only to be reminded by the Bajan that his country has an even more bloated list, but they do just fine.
Jeffrey has just returned home to the PNC!!
…plain talk
Even as Ramkarran was practically reduced to numb silence over the inane utterances of his erstwhile political ally, the Bajan in the room seized the opportunity to put matters in a balanced perspective. The PNC debacle had nothing to do with race or lists. But just the ineptitude of one man – David Granger. The pollster deserves to be quoted in full:
“We had months and months of dithering and I have said again, one of the challenges that Guyanese have with this current president is the fact that he doesn’t seem to make decisions quickly and effectively. And that’s half of the reason why in the year that we saw the advantage that they had, small as it is, has disappeared.
“I honestly believe that based on my poll data, the outcome that is being projected based on the results is consistent with what have happened in the space of time – which is a year.”
The Bajan was the little boy who told the emperor he had no clothes on – and in fact was stark naked!!
…infighting
There’s a cri de coeur circulating in the blogosphere about the PNC being hijacked by Harmon and only Basil Williams can save the day.
What about Comrade Volda, of “only PNC people can get wuk ” fame??
