Trump and APNU+AFC: Will they accept electoral defeat?
In the United States, many leaders in the Democratic Party, commentators, and other prominent people – the latest being Burt Bacharach – are of the
Freddie Kissoon
opinion that if Trump loses the next presidential election, he will invent reasons to say it was not a fair election.
I have written more than once on this page that I believe the upcoming poll in Guyana will be tampered with by APNU+AFC. I am repeating this fear here. This is how I see the result of a free election; one of the two major parties will win a plurality but not a majority. The other scenario I envisage is a process where the West gets involved to bring about an APNU+AFC majority or APNU+AFC by itself rigs the poll.
Here is what I predict, and I will remind readers that I wrote this on May 16, 2019. If there is an improper general election, the AFC will travel throughout Guyana with more intensity than APNU to denounce accusations of rigging. This is because the AFC feels its voice will be more credible because Indians, Amerindians and mixed-race citizens will more believe AFC leaders than the PNC. They think so, of course, but no one will accept their propaganda.
Here is another prediction, the remnants of the WPA will voice support for the fictional results, because they feel their voices carry weight among certain sections of the Afro-Guyanese community. Like the AFC, the WPA knows it is deluding itself. Both parties have no biological functionalism, but their role is to piggyback on the PNC to have a modicum of power.
If the election is rigged, the eyes of every Guyanese will be on David Hinds. Will he support election result tampering? I have known David Hinds for eons. I think he has remained faithful to the essential mental, ideological threads of Walter Rodney. He will not support the violation of people’s right to have their votes counted.
My mother said it so many times that I grew up with it sticking out of my ears – you don’t need a lighted candle to see what daylight can show you. From day one, after new politicians moved into power as a result of the 2015 election, I saw the monstrosity emblazoned on the shirtsleeve of a formation named APNU+AFC.
The signs were there that Guyana had elected people that were no different in moral debasement, ethical corrugation, dehumanised culture, philistine deportment, corruptibility, power intoxication than their PPP predecessors. On the contrary, much to my colossal bewilderment, some PPP leaders, proved to be far more decent, modest and accommodating, than these monsters that came after 2015.
One person at UG, a senior lecturer, was the first woman in this country to discern the ugliness of power after 2015. She expressed disgust on her Facebook page at a particular character that moved into the Cabinet, and she wondered what the future under such personalities would be like. All the signs were there; you didn’t need a candle to look for them.
On the day that the AFC met in their head office to select their Cabinet ministers, three of the bigwigs in the room called one of their middle class friends and offered her the post of Minister of the Environment. We love to criticise the PPP, but that was unthinkable in the PPP. It was the first indication that the AFC was up to no good.
Look what the AFC has become. Anyone who thinks the AFC is a better party than the PPP is utterly naïve. They surreptitiously gave themselves a prodigious salary increase and made it retroactive. And one perversity from May 2015 followed another then another. Today, four years after achieving power, the sordid alliance named APNU+AFC is a very ugly affair that Guyana does not need to repeat. But it will be repeated…not through the ballot box.
We await the judgment of the CCJ. My take is that it will rule against the APNU+AFC-led government more on that in a forthcoming column. But what came from the mouths of all five judges reduced this country to a global shame. The lawyers for the Guyana Government cannot be that hard-headed not to know some of the questions were intensely embarrassing. Two need mentioning.
One judge said that from the time the no-confidence vote was passed, GECOM should have been in preparation mode. GECOM acted as if nothing had happened. Secondly, another judge embarrassed Neil Boston. He asked if you cannot vote against your party, why then have a constitutional provision for a no-confidence vote.
