…is over
Your Eyewitness wasn’t taking any chances. He made a beeline to his polling station even before daybreak to ensure that he’d get his shot at choosing the next government. His forefathers have shed their blood to earn him this right, and he’d be damned if he was going to mess around with it!! But when he reached to his polling tent – yes, he was one of those who’d been relegated to a tent in the middle of a cow pasture – there was already a long, straggling line ahead of him.
Being a strategic thinker, he looked around somewhat anxiously to see if the GECOM brain trust who’d decided on this bucolic locale where he could hear the call of the wild, had catered to what were certain to be calls of nature. They hadn’t!! He was immediately seized with a wave of anxiety that triggered peevish resentment at this whole tent business.
If GECOM felt that folks shouldn’t vote at private residences – whether or not prompted by the Carter Center in 2015 – they had five years to seek alternative arrangements! As the earthy folk saying advised literally on his predicament, “yuh nah wait ‘till yuh wan’ fuh sh*t fuh buil’ latrine”!! And so for polling places!! But what the hell? The die was cast and he’d have to just hunker down and tough it out!!
Your Eyewitness decided to make small talk with his fellow early birds, as the line started to stumble forward. The lady in front was convinced this tent decision wasn’t happenstance. “How come dis only happen in abee area?” she demanded snappishly. “Abee ah animal?” To be honest, the question had struck your Eyewitness when he’d reviewed the list of the areas to be serviced by tents. They were mostly in what would euphemistically be described as “PPP areas”. But while he chose not to go down that road, your Eyewitness was convinced there was a plan afoot to frustrate Opposition supporters from voting. If “one, one dutty buil’ dam”, then one, one opposition voter who quit in disgust would certainly ensure the razor-thin margin was maintained.
By now he’d reached the tent, and felt like Lawrence of Arabia finally getting to an oasis!! He was surprised at the relative youth of the GECOM staff and wondered what happened to all the “old heads”. With Guyana as divided as it is, he was also surprised that almost all of them were from what is (again) euphemistically called “the PNC constituency”.
As he dropped his ballot into the box, he marvelled at the obduracy of the GECOM HR to allow this state of affairs after the caution by the ERC.
Another cog in rigging?
…considered
Your Eyewitness is hoping the count will be over by the end of the day and we’ll all know which of the parties will form the new government. But from what he witnessed yesterday – on blogs, social media, and on TV – he’s gonna go out on a limb and predict that absolutely nothing will change from the pattern of voting established half a century ago: we’d have gone down the ethnic line one mo’ time!!
He looked at the video of an incident at Patentia where in this normally peaceful and placid rural community, there was suddenly an explosion of a cacophony of abuse and pillorying by APNU supporters; with shouts of “We want Granger”!! And what precipitated this was a PPP elections agent assisting a supporter with some difficulty he had with his ID!! Rumours of a busload of fake IDs being distributed filled the air for an hour or more.
Point is, this is a community that all suffered from the shutdown of the sole employer – Wales Factory.
But the divisions remained!
…and fashion
One of the thoughts that crossed your Eyewitness’ mind was what was going to happen with all those green/yellow and red T-shirts and caps, after the elections.
Will we still wear our tribal loyalties on our sleeve?
