I was giddy all elections season. I followed all the reports of the rallies, I attended the PPP and APNU+AFC rallies in my community; I was sharing opinions online, I got into some healthy debates and discussions, wrote some analyses of all parties, and provided commentary on the history and the current happenings of politics in Guyana. On March 2nd, “E-Day” I was at my polling station (as tradition dictates) at the crack of dawn! It was my second time voting and I was ready to cast my ballot!
As someone said, “Elections is like Christmas for you” and it really was. Until the Mingo/Region 4 fiasco. The final votes to be verified, and we were not getting it right. Spreadsheets and not SOPs were being used by GECOM, people took breaks and went missing for hours, there was ruckus and a stampede by the Opposition parties, and finally a declaration was made by the Returning Officer before the SOPs were done being verified. Observers got arrested, people protested; we went to court.
The court invalidated the declaration, said it needs to be verified thoroughly in a transparent process. The process began the next day, not as the court ordered so they went back to court for clarity. It re-started, not as the court ordered so the international observers left with their decision that this was not transparent as the other Regions were and it did not seem fair.
Let’s flashback for second.
On March 2 at 10pm I was at my polling station, all giddy again because results are coming out! I am running on the corridors of Diamond Secondary School (my polling station), taking pictures of the results, sending it to my neighbours and even posted it on Facebook.
See here in this screenshot. Time stamp: March 2, 10:34pm.
Now to the present. Imagine my surprise when I heard a recording of GECOM calling out the votes of my polling station. The figures they called out did not match the figures of the SOPs I took a picture of. In fact, GECOM’s figures deducted 20 votes from the PPP/C and added it to the APNU+AFC.
I cried.
Literally, I cried. And my body got numb.
Even though I voted for the coalition it was wrong of GECOM to do this. This is not “the will of the people”. This was tampering with people’s votes. This was invalidating their votes. This was abusing their democratic right.
An observer said it has been like that all day. Every SOP GECOM read from, inflated and deflated numbers of the SOPs they got from people like me who took pictures, from news agencies and even the PPP SOPs.
GECOM initially refused to show other persons the SOPs they were reading from. They then did this via projector at the HQ, didn’t answer how they came about those SOPs. They declared a winner for Region 4.
I am not saying the government did this to stay in power BTW. That is an assumption, I have no proof to say this and I am ridiculously naive to believe people will always do the right thing.
I am saying Returning Officer Mingo and his camp did this because he and they are biased towards a coalition victory.
I too want the coalition to win, but not like this. It needs to be a fair race, and a clean win.
We vilify persons, the observers - local and international - the commentators, the unbiased, the independent Guyanese who are not loyal to any party, just their State. We vilify them for seeing what GECOM did, for saying something, for raising our voices against this injustice against the Guyanese people by GECOM.
This was eating away at my conscience and I am not even involved in this process! I decided to share my photos, and the recording in the hope that something can be done to correct this wrong.
GECOM has lost our trust, and I will no longer be voting in an election that GECOM oversees unless this injustice is fixed.