@Former Member posted:

... says Paul Tennassee

https://www.kaieteurnewsonline...ship-paul-tennassee/

Guyana already in a dictatorship – Paul Tennassee

Jul 26, 2020 News 0 Comments

Former Guyanese politician, Paul Nehru Tennassee said that Guyana is already in a dictatorship, and that if President David Granger refuses to accept a declaration of the results of the national vote recount, he will have consolidated that dictatorship.

Professor and former Guyanese politician, Paul Nehru Tennassee

Tennassee addressed the public on Kaieteur Radio’s Room 592 on Saturday evening. He had headed the Democratic Labour Movement (DLM), a political party which existed in the 1980s and contested the 1985 elections in the fight for free and fair elections. He is now a director at The Roraima Institute (TRI), a non-partisan research and policy institute, and a professor at the University of the District of Columbia in Washington, DC USA. There, he teaches in Government and Political Corruption, among other things.
Explaining how he arrived at his view, Tennassee said, “Constitutionally, since March of last year, we were supposed to have an election based on the no confidence motion and so. So from April last year to the elections of March this year, if you do not have a sitting parliament, what do you have in a country? You have a dictatorship. You have a dictator.”
Tennassee pointed to the importance of Parliament as a representation of the people’s sovereignty.
“The people are sovereign but the people delegate that sovereignty to the parliament that they elect,” he said, “There is no parliament. So we have had a dictatorship from then to now.”
He noted that there is talk of calling a state of emergency in Guyana, and stated implicitly that the function of such would be to consolidate said dictatorship.

Incumbent President David Granger

The election situation, he indicated, is not in tension with his view of the system.
The Granger coalition has lost the election, but it refuses to accept its loss and has been claiming that its leaders think the coalition won.
“We maintain,” the party said in a statement last week, “that the Elections Commission can only make a ‘declaration’ based on valid votes. The recount process which was conducted, painstakingly, for thirty-three days revealed massive irregularities and extensive fraud which cannot be foisted on the Guyanese people to contrive an outcome that betrays the will of the electorate.”
“My personal view,” Tennassee told Kaieteur Radio, “is that I do not believe that the PNC leadership does not know that they lost the elections. I think they know they lost the election, but they’re not being honest.”
He noted that all of the political parties as well as the international observers have said that the APNU+AFC has lost the election.
“How are you going to say that these reputable international organizations are telling a lie? Why would they tell a lie?” he asked.
“We have had a history where the PNC has developed tremendous expertise to rob elections,” he said, “to organize fraudulent elections.”
One of the issues pointed out is that the coalition leaders are presenting an issue of race to their Afro-Guyanese supporters in an effort to promote an ideology of ethnic nationalism.
“They claim they are speaking for all the African people in Guyana,” Tennassee said. “And they are saying that they fear that if the PPP comes to office, even though they win the elections, and they know that, that there will be what you call ‘Indian domination’. They have presented to the African people a situation that is almost existential. They are telling the African people their very lives are being threatened, that during one of the PPP administrations, about five hundred young Africans were killed. This is a fact; when I go to do listening interviews, I speak to people in the PNC and the PPP and the people in the grassroots, and people of other parties.”
Tennassee said that if the Granger coalition continues to go down this road and “mess up Guyana, there is going to be a very big vacuum in the Afro-Guyanese community for leadership.”
He said that Guyana is lucky now to benefit from a “geopolitical windfall” where the international community has united far and wide in calls for a declaration of the results of the national vote recount, and in defence of democracy in Guyana.
This is a windfall, Tennassee said, that Guyana must use its development after this election saga has ended. He opined that Guyanese will have to organize and work in concert with the international community to bring the Granger dictatorship to its knees in the shortest possible time.

The PNC led Coalition fits that old Guyanese saying 'can't take a hint and get a message' perfectly. Even after the hints from the 2016 and 2018 LGE, they through their spokesman Nagamootoo foolishly proclaimed "bring it on". Although it was brought on massively, they have employed one shameless distortion after another not the most ridiculous one being that one has to cut a parliamentarian in half in order to count them. They don't even argue law or fact anymore but is grossly entangled in mere conspiracy nonsense after another. Looks like that nonsense overflowed into the COA yesterday with Justice Dawn Gregory-Barnes doing everything possible to entertain their silliness. I would not be surprised if she proclaims on Thursday that the PNC can only lose the appeal if there is a 3-1 ruling from the three judges. After all, she was one of the two foolish justices who also argued that one needs to cut a parliamentarian in half in order to count them. If she doesn't make that proclamation, the PNC will.

@Former Member posted:

The PNC led Coalition fits that old Guyanese saying 'can't take a hint and get a message' perfectly. Even after the hints from the 2016 and 2018 LGE, they through their spokesman Nagamootoo foolishly proclaimed "bring it on". Although it was brought on massively, they have employed one shameless distortion after another not the most ridiculous one being that one has to cut a parliamentarian in half in order to count them. They don't even argue law or fact anymore but is grossly entangled in mere conspiracy nonsense after another. Looks like that nonsense overflowed into the COA yesterday with Justice Dawn Gregory-Barnes doing everything possible to entertain their silliness. I would not be surprised if she proclaims on Thursday that the PNC can only lose the appeal if there is a 3-1 ruling from the three judges. After all, she was one of the two foolish justices who also argued that one needs to cut a parliamentarian in half in order to count them. If she doesn't make that proclamation, the PNC will.

Rest assured, if she makes such a silly 3-0 ruling the PPP/C will take the matter to the CCJ. 

@Former Member posted:

Rest assured, if she makes such a silly 3-0 ruling the PPP/C will take the matter to the CCJ. 

There is going to be a 2-1 ruling or possibly a 3-0 ruling to dismiss the case which has no merit.  

@Former Member posted:

Rest assured, if she makes such a silly 3-0 ruling the PPP/C will take the matter to the CCJ. 

I wasn't even thinking she was going to make a 3-0 rule. I was thinking that she will argue that since there are 3 judges to get the majority you first have to divide the 3 judges in half giving you one and one half judges then add one which will then give you two and one half judges and since it is at least half you have to round it up to three judges versus one which amounts to four judges out of a total of three judges.

Similar to how she argued that parliament NM vote had to me 34 plus 32 totaling 65 parliamentarians.  

@Ramakant-P posted:

There is going to be a 2-1 ruling or possibly a 3-0 ruling to dismiss the case which has no merit.  

I am not sure about Barnes. Her animosity towards the non-Coalition lawyers was blatant.

It will be a majority 2-1 ruling on favour of the PPP and forces of democracy.