Home Letters This is straight from the PNC’s arsenal of deception
Dear Editor,
They did it in 1997 and are now making another desperate effort for the 2025 Election. The PNC are making another bold attempt at undermining the course of a well-established electoral system by illegally inserting another.
I say illegal insertion of another for the simple fact that establishing another non-legal system (it’s not enshrined in law) – the institution of biometric balloting – just before an election means that we are heading straight into trouble. You cannot abruptly put into place a new system and expect the voting public to cast their ballots in an ambience of comfort. This is what a common overview of the situation dictates. What is sure to happen is a bungling of the process and many voters being disenfranchised, just like what had obtained in 1997.
This situation would develop if biometrics is adopted as the voting system at this stage; it just would not work. This was vividly brought to light in the 1997 Election, when voting by the sole use of an Identification (ID) Card was put in place.
At the conclusion of that election, it was the PNC who made an aggressive call that the election was fraudulent because Government had used an illegal system of voting. Mark you, voting with the sole use of an ID Card was a PNC idea which was piloted by them in Parliament, but the end result was not what they had anticipated, hence the bloody street protests that followed.
My point is that the PNC had deceived themselves into believing they could win an election here in Guyana, and in that self-deception, they are in the habit of formulating schemes that might enhance their rigging. The truth is that the PNC winning will not happen! The PNC is good at bringing into law proposals that they would turn against and violate.
So, it would be foolish to substitute another system of balloting when the present paper system fulfills the requirements of a free and fair outcome. The present system has proven its worth many times over, and we shall proceed with it.
My advice to Beverly Alert is to stop her nonsense about a biometric free and fair system; we do have a free, fair, and transparent system of paper balloting that has stood the test of time. Stop your political posturing, you are only making a fellow Berbician look stupid before the world.
Respectfully,
Neil Adams