TUF member recalls horrors of elections rigging under PNC

‘OLD habits die hard’ is an adage that TUF (United Force) member Murtland ‘Slugger’ Williams wishes Guyanese to be very wary of as they cast their ballots on May 11. He further urges that as they exercise their franchise come polling day, they be very vigilant so as to safeguard the transparency and accountability of the elections process.

Williams, now 74, has lived through and directly witnessed what he terms “The PNC’s repeated rigging of elections in the 1960s.”

Dr Odeen Ishmael

He recalled a horrid experience one Elections Day at a polling station when ballot papers were forged and stuffed into ballot boxes.

POLLING DAY 1960 “In the 1960s, I was a TUF Polling Agent at the Campbellville Government School, working along with agents from the PPP and the PNC; and at around 5:30 on the afternoon of the elections, several bus-loads of people came into the building and the Returning Officer gave them pencils and they started to go around the table signing papers. I was there; I saw it,” Williams said. “There were about 30 to 40 people just going around in circles and signing papers. I turned to the PNC guy [polling agent] and say, ‘What you gon do about this?’ We [PPP and TUF polling agents] started to object, but when they finished, they just threw it [the signed paper] in the ballot boxes.” He said persons in charge of the elections process subsequently visited the Polling Station and they were instructed to stay there. Williams recalled: “Sir Donald Jackson and Sir Harold Bollers, who were in charge of the elections, came; soldiers also came, and they held us up and took away the ballot boxes. Sir Donald Jackson and Sir Harold Bollers left around 7pm; and at around 8, the PPP guy got into contact with his Party, and somebody from his Party came and got us out.” According to Williams, the ballot boxes the soldiers took away were destined for Queen’s College, where the ballots were to be counted, but he and his fellow Polling Agents never had the chance to witness that exercise. “We [the Polling Agents] were supposed to go with those boxes, but they came with the soldiers, held us up there, and took the boxes,” Williams said, adding: “In those days, you had to be on the street corners [campaigning]; and if you talk wrong, an egg, a bottle, or a brick coming at you. You weren’t protected by any television screen; if you wrong-talk, you had it coming to you.”

ODEEN’S EXPERIENCE Williams’ account of the elections process back in the 60s is akin to that of Dr. Odeen Ishmael, as was published in the Guyana Journal of May 2006, which details the tragedy of the 1973 rigged elections. According to Dr Ishmael, “Hundreds of PPP supporters who waited hours in queues to vote were turned away by the Presiding Officers who told them that they had already voted by post or proxy. These persons protested that they never applied to vote by proxy or post, and that they did not receive any postal ballots. “Then, late in the afternoon, many young PNC supporters without identification cards, and whose names were not on the list as voters, were permitted to vote, despite objections from the PPP Polling Agents. As a result, more votes were cast in some Polling Centres than by electors on the list.” Dr Ishmael also recounted the role of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) in the proceedings, saying: “But despite all of this, the unpopular PNC realised by mid-afternoon that even the massive use of the proxy, overseas, and postal voting was no guarantee for its return to power. It then instituted its back-up plan; to deploy the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) soldiers to take control of the ballot boxes to ensure a PNC two-thirds majority.” At the close of polls, he said, “The majority of the PPP Polling Agents were not permitted to affix their seals on the ballot boxes by the Presiding Officers. And almost immediately, many of the Polling Agents of the Opposition Parties were forced out of the Polling Stations at gun-point by the policemen and the GDF soldiers, while others were not allowed to observe the sealing of the ballot boxes by the Presiding Officers. “In addition, the GDF soldiers and armed police forcibly prevented Opposition Polling Agents to follow behind the vehicles transporting the ballot boxes.”

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