Graphic facts and brutal realities of the 2011 national elections
December 4, 2011 | By KNews | Filed Under Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
It wasn’t APNU. It wasn’t the AFC. It wasn’t Freddie Kissoon and Nigel Hughes who Bharrat Jagdeo loves to cuss down. It wasn’t the Kaieteur News and Stabroek News. It was the Commonwealth Observer Group that told the Guyanese people that there was definite unfairness in the elections because State resources were used by the PPP in its campaign. Demerarawaves.com in its report concluded that the team stopped short of characterizing the election as fair.
To say that State resources were used by the ruling party in the elections is to put it in a mild, mild way. There was a massive transfer of facilities and resources from the governmental structures to the PPP campaign. It was graphic, immoral and barefaced.
And how do I know this? I saw this infamy with my own two eyes over a period of six weeks.
I wrote about this morbidity in my columns during the election campaign. Should Parliament order an investigation? I think it should. Ministry’s drivers should be subpoenaed to testify as to what they did and who ordered them.
That the PPP lost four seats and got fewer votes than the combined opposition is not unbelievable, but it is an impossibility. How did the PPP fail to get a two-thirds majority when the facts and the reality of their methodologies are studied? First, State facilities were a prodigious advantage for the PPP over APNU and AFC.
I observed in one of my columns that transport availability was lacking in both APNU and AFC campaigns. I visited APNU’s office on Regent Street regularly, not to mention the inordinate time spent at the AFC’s headquarters. They could have done with lots more facilities.
Secondly, for each billboard APNU and AFC put up, the PPP erected a thousand. If the AFC and APNU had a thousand billboards around this country for the campaign, the PPP had 25,000 more. Thirdly, the PPP’s coffers were overflowing. If anything was bountiful in Freedom House for the election, it was money. This writer knows from personal insider knowledge that APNU and AFC had money problems. This writer intervened to get a businessman to pay for more polling agents for one of the opposition parties because funds had run out.
Any analyst who observed the campaign knew that the PPP’s finances were awesome. Thousands of boys and girls were paid $10,000 a day to share out flyers and paste up pamphlets on lamp posts. It was Robert Persaud who said that each of the gargantuan billboards cost $380,000. And there were thousands of such structures all over Guyana.
Thirdly, the media access the PPP had at its disposal should have made a two-thirds victory simple and sweet.
Never again, I repeat never again, should the people of this country stand by and accept that two media houses owned by the people of Guyana can be used as a floor cloth by a political party contesting a national election. This is what the PPP reduced the Chronicle and NCN to. It was the most sickening and depraved aspect of the 2011 election campaign.
Every day, without exception, NCN and the Chronicle fronted the PPP’s campaign. I am not talking about Government’s business. I am specifically referring to news about the PPP’s election campaign.
How the PPP failed to get over eighty percent of the votes will remain a mystery not only in Guyana but in the world. Apart from NCN and the Chronicle, the PPP secured the services of NCN radio, Guyana Times, their party newspaper, Mirror and channels 28, 65 and 69. Really! Look at those media resources! Yet the combined opposition whipped them. Who was watching the PPP to cause them to become a minority government? The PPP’s theme was, “Dem ah watch meh.” Who was meant by “dem?”
Fourthly, what happened to the colossal crowds in the combined rallies of the PPP and the Day of Appreciation? PPP spin doctors put the overall total at hundreds of thousands. If the Day of Appreciation had 30,000 then 40,000 at another rally, then just two events brought seventy thousand. Really, how did the PPP fail to get eighty percent of the ballots?
I will close with the answer. The PPP during the election campaign fooled itself. It was a bizarre psychological act. As the party paid people to attend rallies, as it brought in foreign performers, the largeness of the attendance deceived it. The party thought that was its support. The crowds collected the money, ate the food, enjoyed the circus, then went away and voted for the opposition. Fools are people who fool themselves.
December 4, 2011 | By KNews | Filed Under Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
It wasn’t APNU. It wasn’t the AFC. It wasn’t Freddie Kissoon and Nigel Hughes who Bharrat Jagdeo loves to cuss down. It wasn’t the Kaieteur News and Stabroek News. It was the Commonwealth Observer Group that told the Guyanese people that there was definite unfairness in the elections because State resources were used by the PPP in its campaign. Demerarawaves.com in its report concluded that the team stopped short of characterizing the election as fair.
To say that State resources were used by the ruling party in the elections is to put it in a mild, mild way. There was a massive transfer of facilities and resources from the governmental structures to the PPP campaign. It was graphic, immoral and barefaced.
And how do I know this? I saw this infamy with my own two eyes over a period of six weeks.
I wrote about this morbidity in my columns during the election campaign. Should Parliament order an investigation? I think it should. Ministry’s drivers should be subpoenaed to testify as to what they did and who ordered them.
That the PPP lost four seats and got fewer votes than the combined opposition is not unbelievable, but it is an impossibility. How did the PPP fail to get a two-thirds majority when the facts and the reality of their methodologies are studied? First, State facilities were a prodigious advantage for the PPP over APNU and AFC.
I observed in one of my columns that transport availability was lacking in both APNU and AFC campaigns. I visited APNU’s office on Regent Street regularly, not to mention the inordinate time spent at the AFC’s headquarters. They could have done with lots more facilities.
Secondly, for each billboard APNU and AFC put up, the PPP erected a thousand. If the AFC and APNU had a thousand billboards around this country for the campaign, the PPP had 25,000 more. Thirdly, the PPP’s coffers were overflowing. If anything was bountiful in Freedom House for the election, it was money. This writer knows from personal insider knowledge that APNU and AFC had money problems. This writer intervened to get a businessman to pay for more polling agents for one of the opposition parties because funds had run out.
Any analyst who observed the campaign knew that the PPP’s finances were awesome. Thousands of boys and girls were paid $10,000 a day to share out flyers and paste up pamphlets on lamp posts. It was Robert Persaud who said that each of the gargantuan billboards cost $380,000. And there were thousands of such structures all over Guyana.
Thirdly, the media access the PPP had at its disposal should have made a two-thirds victory simple and sweet.
Never again, I repeat never again, should the people of this country stand by and accept that two media houses owned by the people of Guyana can be used as a floor cloth by a political party contesting a national election. This is what the PPP reduced the Chronicle and NCN to. It was the most sickening and depraved aspect of the 2011 election campaign.
Every day, without exception, NCN and the Chronicle fronted the PPP’s campaign. I am not talking about Government’s business. I am specifically referring to news about the PPP’s election campaign.
How the PPP failed to get over eighty percent of the votes will remain a mystery not only in Guyana but in the world. Apart from NCN and the Chronicle, the PPP secured the services of NCN radio, Guyana Times, their party newspaper, Mirror and channels 28, 65 and 69. Really! Look at those media resources! Yet the combined opposition whipped them. Who was watching the PPP to cause them to become a minority government? The PPP’s theme was, “Dem ah watch meh.” Who was meant by “dem?”
Fourthly, what happened to the colossal crowds in the combined rallies of the PPP and the Day of Appreciation? PPP spin doctors put the overall total at hundreds of thousands. If the Day of Appreciation had 30,000 then 40,000 at another rally, then just two events brought seventy thousand. Really, how did the PPP fail to get eighty percent of the ballots?
I will close with the answer. The PPP during the election campaign fooled itself. It was a bizarre psychological act. As the party paid people to attend rallies, as it brought in foreign performers, the largeness of the attendance deceived it. The party thought that was its support. The crowds collected the money, ate the food, enjoyed the circus, then went away and voted for the opposition. Fools are people who fool themselves.