Some are asking how come it took more than seven hours to count just 826 votes at the PNC Biennial Congress election for the Chairman. Fifty years ago, asked a similar question at a PPP Congress, PPP AG Dr Fenton Ramsahoye gave a cryptic answer that is quite applicable to the PNC conundrum: “The party works in mysterious ways!!” He was, of course, alluding to the biblical homily on the “ways” of the Lord, which are beyond the ken or ordinary mortals like you and your Eyewitness!!
Now the party we’re presently trying to divine is the PNC – which gave a whole new meaning to the word “rigging” when it used the technique to stay in power between 1968 and 1992. You’re talking about 24 years to perfect a practice during at least five general elections with scads of International and Regional Observers in close attendance. If you can earn a PhD in, say, four years, think of the institutional memory and techniques on rigging you accumulate in 24!!
Problem is, it wasn’t just the PNC party that did the job. As your Eyewitness has been at pains to point out, the REGIME Burnham constructed to keep the PPP at bay (and out of Government) involved also the Bureaucracy and the Disciplined Forces. The latter was more crucial than the party on the rigging front. After playing the “overseas vote” card in 1968, the PNC couldn’t very well cash that cheque a second time. So, in 1973, they called in the Disciplined Forces.
The GDF were the ones who seized ballot boxes, and the GNS “counted” the votes at Camp Ayanganna. This counting wasn’t as simple as it sounded – duplicate ballot papers had to be printed; they had to be filled in in a prescribed formula to give the PNC a two-thirds majority – but still keep the PPP alive, to show the world there was an “Opposition”! This operation, of course, was replicated in 1978 (the “house” or “mouse” referendum); 1980, and 1985.
During this time, the PNC party had absolutely NO role in keeping the regime in power!! So when your Eyewitness hears that the “party” people conspired to keep out the “army” people, he wonders how come, with a historian as leader, the history of the Disciplined Forces to keep the regime in power isn’t appreciated. But that’s part of the problem with Guyanese politics, isn’t it?
It isn’t “politically correct” to say parties in general are, by definition, “ethnic”…so we pretend they’re “multi-ethnic”. And with the PNC, since they won’t admit to rigging, they won’t admit the military types are more PNC than the PNC.
So the party outrigged the army?!! How ironic!!
…on liquorgate!!
What a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!! Looks like the “liquour lie” might just be the straw to break the “camel of corruption’s” back!! After all, with sixty-five MPs having access to the MP Lounge at Parliament, surely the PNC didn’t think only teetotaller Jagdeo would spill the alcohol?!!
Well, we now have confirmation that not only is liquour served during “sittings”; the servings might go on into the wee hours of the morning, when the occasions become ‘staggerings” or even “lie-ings”!! The imbibers didn’t even have respect for the 2am curfew of their member Ramjattan, Minister of Public Security – who’s a card-carrying imbiber!!
Now, most corruption is conducted in secret, so when the accusations are hurled and fingers pointed – such as in the present Demerara Harbour Bridge Design Bid – the denials may have some plausibility. In the case of Liquourgate, it’s not going to take much – just a question in the house – for the parliamentary tab on liquour to be revealed!!
So who’re the lushes?
…on the teachers’ strike
Your Eyewitness still believes there will be no strike. The PNC-led Government may be corrupt; they may be inept; but they ain’t stupid.
They can count 15,000 teachers faster than 800 delegates!!
