ChrisRam.net

This article was Published on May 24, 2020

Dear Editor

Today, the Working People’s Alliance will mark the 40th anniversary since its leader Walter Rodney was killed. A Commission of Inquiry (COI) found that he was murdered at the hands of the PNC and its agents. I was the WPA’s Counsel along with Moses Bhagwan (in absentia) and took my instructions from Tacuma Ogunseye, Jocelyn Dow, Dr. David Hinds, Desmond Trotman, Eusi Kwayana and to a lesser extent Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine. Despite the passage of more than thirty years, the evidence provided to me was no less compelling or riveting. In his evidence, Ogunseye told the COI that Mr. Burnham was prepared not to lose power at all costs, and that he was “prepared to do anything to maintain that power”. As the French would say, “plus ca change……”

There were stories of photographs of these persons and their cars featuring in a PNC issued Recognition Handbook; of Roopnaraine and Nigel Westmaas having to seek shelter from Burnham’s goons in the cane fields of West Demerara; of Burnham mockingly promising to send Rodney to the Olympics for outrunning those same goons; of Burnham’s wicked plot to recruit Gregory Smith to kill Rodney and then sending Smith by GDF plane to French Guiana; of the opportunistic issue of passports by the Immigration Department; of the attempted public murder of leading member Dr. Josh Ramsammy in which a top PNC strongman still with us was named by the WPA; and of the killings by Burnham’s police of leading WPA members including Ohene Koama and Edward Dublin. Incidentally I borrow the term “goon” from the WPA’s official publication Dayclean. 

But the WPA was not cowed and the courage of Andaiye, Bonita Bone, Dow, Karen De Souza, Hinds, Ogunseye and Roopnaraine and hundreds of unsung heroes, employed and unemployed, academics and labourers, men and women, young and old, all risking their lives for democracy, for Rodney, for each other and for Guyana will long be remembered. When Burnham thought he had covered all the tracks it was a simple woman – Pamela Beharry – who exposed the plot. It was as Dickens would say, the best of times and the worst of times.

I played a minor role in the WPA from 1986 to 2016 but was invited to meetings of the Executive of the Party. For several elections I was associated with fundraising for the WPA and for the 2015 elections specifically, Maurice Odle and I were responsible for fund raising while Kidackie Amsterdam and I were responsible for upgrading the WPA’s facilities in Queenstown and the preparation and distribution of the Party’s paper Dayclean. Both from my knowledge and observation, the WPA has departed from the high standards with which it has always been associated – a party of high principles. 

Having played a major role in the weakening and the eventual downfall of the Burnham dictatorship, the WPA has spent the last five years practising some of the very evils for which so many of its rank and file valiantly fought the dictatorship. Unfortunately, no sooner was it given executive power than it willingly accepted the direction that it should use its ministry (Education) and Department (SOCU) to find jobs for its supporters as the AFC was doing at Public Infrastructure and Information. In exchanging its principles for power, it willingly accepted disrespect and indignities from Granger who refused to practise power sharing in his Coalition, leaving the likes of David Hinds and Clive Thomas to fret continually. Despite Roopnaraine’s contribution of the best speeches in the 2015 election campaign, the WPA accepted the rejection of Roopnaraine’s appointment to the Environment Ministry on spurious grounds. I know this because I was a witness to those grumblings.

As time went by, the WPA became tolerant of corruption, incompetence and wastage on a scale unprecedented in Guyana. It witnessed the rapid decline of GuySuCo caused partly by the Granger Administration’s failure to follow the recommendations of a Commission of Inquiry of which Clive Thomas was a co-Chair and author of a major section of the report. It remained silent. Egregiously, the “Doctor” party appeared incapable of calculating the majority of 65 – all because of its embrace of jobs and perks.

I must say this: I have not heard of any accusations of financial improprieties being levelled against the party members in Government. On the other hand, none including Clive Thomas and Rupert Roopnaraine, both famous for their intellectual prowess, has stood out for competence or outstanding performance. Dr. Maurice Odle as Chairman of NICIL is another long-standing member and he will find it difficult to escape responsibility for the many failures of NICIL which bears a large share of the blame for GuySuCo’s near demise. 

The women of the WPA were always a formidable set of individuals including Andaiye, Bonita, Vanda and Danuta Radzik and Karen De Souza and individually and collectively made a tremendous contribution to the Party. It might be an overstatement to say they were a balancing influence in the WPA but it does appear that their departure many years ago weakened the Party. This was exacerbated by the departure from Guyana of a whole coterie of the Party’s leadership including Kwayana, Moses Bhagwan, Rohit Kanhai and Nigel Westmaas. I recall driving up to Buxton to pick up Kwayana the morning he left Guyana and of his dissatisfaction with  Ogunseye’s role in relation to the violence which had erupted on the lower East Coast.

A movement that was once famous for its values and Rodneyite principles is now deeply involved in the attempt to rig the 2020 elections. It has been silent on the attempt by the Region 4 Returning Officer to rig the elections in favour of the APNU of which the WPA was at one time the second largest party. Judging by their public roles, the leading active members of the Party are Desmond Trotman, Tacuma Ogunseye and David Hinds. The first holds the PNC line in GECOM, Ogunseye remains committed to the romantic notion of a liberation struggle and Hinds’ dismissal of elections moves him sharply away from the WPA’s embrace of multicultural relationships and free and fair elections and closer to the promotion of an increasingly strident brand of African rights.

Hinds as a political commentator and agitator can benefit from his other role – that of an academic. He should do some additional reading on democracy and elections and I strongly recommend to him Staffan Lindberg’s book “Democracy and Elections in Africa”, a passage of which was cited in a recent Malawi elections petition case. This is what Lindberg said:

“While there are many views on what democracy is – or ought to be – a common denominator among modern democracies is elections … But elections are also and more importantly an institutionalized attempt to actualize (sic) the essence of democracy: rule of the people by the people. Every modern definition of representative democracy includes participatory and contested elections perceived as the legitimate procedure for the translation of the rule by the people into workable executive and legislative power…”.   

The WPA in the pre-democracy era propounded and embraced as a foundational principle People’s Power which must surely recognise the will of the people expressed in their vote. Hinds wants to reject that vote – to destroy the ballot boxes. He wants power sharing but refused to engage me on a Globespan programme on his definition of power sharing. Hinds who is seen as a leading WPA spokesperson must recognise that Rodney’s party’s power sharing call arose in a pre-democracy era. The WPA subsequently supported inclusionary democracy in Articles 13 and 149 C of the Constitution. What WPA’s spokespersons, including Hinds, are now advocating is the abandonment of these Articles so that their party can stay in power – by any means necessary, to use Ogunseye’s words – as Burnham did from 1968 to 1985. 

And just as an afterthought, this power sharing call by Hinds and his colleagues only arose because the vote count showed his Coalition as losing the elections as confirmed by the recount. There are some truths which the WPA seems to want to avoid. That is not what Rodney stood for and was killed for. The WPA should let him rest in peace. I fail to see how they can now celebrate him.

Yours faithfully,

Christopher Ram

This was Published on May 24, 2020

Dear Editor,

With atypical speed, GECOM Chair Claudette Singh distanced herself from the unfortunate statement by (GECOM) Commissioner Sase Gunraj that purported to convey the Chairman’s views on the recurrent, outlandish claims by the APNU+AFC and its spokespersons such as Aubrey Norton and James Bond. By contrast, the Chairman appears unperturbed by the almost daily pronouncements by Gunraj’s counterpart Vincent Alexander and by members of the public concerned about the descent of GECOM into what seems to be a criminally-minded enterprise involving fraud among senior Government functionaries, the APNU, the PNCR and the AFC powerfully enabled recently by the COVID–19 Task Force.

If Singh was as concerned about the constitutional duty and the reputation of GECOM, instead of “holding it in abeyance”, she would have called for an internal investigation into Mingo’s out-of-reality declaration on the District 4 results. I have never seen a judge or retired judge who treated a transparent, barefaced fraud with such deference. Surely, Singh cannot be ignorant of the evidence of Mingo’s fraud and its elevation by Chief Election Officer Lowenfield. Yet she remains mysteriously silent on what is effectively a fraud on GECOM itself.  

Claudette Singh was a Puisne Judge from about the mid-eighties, and up to her appointment as GECOM Chair she was still in public service – well over four decades. She was appointed Chair in July 2019 – less than one year ago. Yet, she has she has managed to draw more attention to herself in the latter period than in all the decades serving the country in a legal capacity. Sadly for her, most of the attention has been negative. Worse, it has been largely self-inflicted. It is not that Claudette Singh was wholly on one side or the other: it is that some of her positions serve to confuse while others defy common sense, logic and basic principles.

Take for an example the recurrent and sometimes fictitious claims at the recount made by APNU+AFC agents like Coretta McDonald and Ganesh Mahipaul. To Mahipaul’s credit, if that is allowed, he admitted that his claims of dead and absent voters were based on hearsay information. Yet Claudette Singh’s GECOM is prepared to entertain those and similar allegations. On the other hand, McDonald, whose conduct at these recounts does the premier trade unions umbrella organisation no credit, has been more shameless, calling out fictitious box numbers at her Recount Station. Again much time was unnecessarily consumed in recording her fiction. A self-respecting Chairman on seeing such a pattern by whoever, should have convened a meeting of the Commissioners to set guidelines on how complaints are to be addressed and to prevent hindrances to the early completion of the recount.  Instead, Singh has committed to affording those mischievous and made-up claims “considerable deliberations and decisions at the Commission”.

Singh and the Commissioners must surely be aware that the so-called representations and challenges by the APNU+AFC are further frustrating the achievement of the statutory limitation for the declaration of the election results – fifteen days from the date of the elections – and its own timeframe of twenty-five days for the duration of the recount. GECOM ought to have reiterated the statutory parameters of a recount, the principle regarding complaints of a general nature such as allegations of impersonation, the respective roles and functions of GECOM and those of the High Court in matters dealing with the results of elections and the timeframe of the Order regarding the recount which is not part of the country’s subsidiary legislation. Claudette Singh has to realise that even circuses come to an end and that at some point, she as an individual with her reputation in danger, will have to explain her silence and inaction to a court of law, a Commission of Inquiry or to history.

In chiding Gunraj, Claudette Singh also referred to the legal principle known as onus of proof as “her view”. While the recount drags on, Singh should go back to her decision in the Esther Perreira case in which she addressed the question and placed it squarely within the context of the Constitution and the National Assembly (Validity of Elections) Act Cap.1:04. While I believe that she misapplied the use of the word “may” in the relevant provision of the Constitution, she accepted and so ruled, that he who asserts must prove, i.e. the onus of proof rests on the person claiming any irregularity. Years later and at a critical juncture, she is now referring to a well-established provision applied by her in the Esther Perreira case as “a view”. Such carelessness and indecisiveness only serves to embolden the outlandish claims and encourage the adventurism of persons like Leonard Craig and Desmond Trotman who consider themselves competent to pronounce on legal matters with the certainty of seasoned, senior counsel. 

If she were to deny the PPP/C as having won, it can be on one ground only – the flaws fictitiously claimed by the APNU+AFC. If she does that then for the same reason, she cannot declare Granger the winner either. Would she then declare a draw and let Granger remain in office? That is what the APNU+AFC wants and then have years in litigation and further manipulations by GECOM to give Granger an illegitimate five years counting from fifteen days after March 2, 2020. 

Granger’s end of visit speech at the Counting Centre last week showed him at his duplicitous best. He did not say he would accept the results of the recount which he agreed to with the CARICOM Chair. He said only that he would accept any declaration made by GECOM. Mindful of the power relationship between him and Singh, her record of indecisiveness, and the pressures she has had to endure from him, Amna Ally, Joseph Harmon, Volda Lawrence and a string of every-thing-to-lose second level PNCR persons, Granger clearly thinks that Claudette Singh will give him the victory he so badly needs to restore his damaged image. He has therefore placed on her that burden.  

Legally, Claudette Singh has no choice but to make a declaration based on the recount. She needs to show that she is the Iron Lady she boasts to be. And she must, if she cares about the country and her reputation, think about the implications and the consequences of delivering to Granger what the voters denied him.

Yours faithfully,

Christopher Ram

This article was Published on the May 26, 2020

Dear Editor,

I refer to a letter of Monday, May 25 by Kit Nascimento (`If David Granger’s character and good name is in question he has only himself to blame’) in the Stabroek News. Mr. Nascimento is unarguably the most capable media/public relations individual in Guyana and has been so for decades. Indeed, if age has done anything to him, it is that it has made him more formidable and fearsome. One takes him on at their peril. I was not at all surprised therefore, at the robustness of his response to the demand by the Ministry of the Presidency seeking an apology for the contents of the letter. They got more, much more than they had bargained for.    

Historian David Granger would have been well aware of some of the famous clashes Nascimento has had with previous presidents. Granger knows too the words “who can libel Burnham” in the Dayclean of the WPA we all used to admire and respect. Granger would therefore be well advised not to take the bait and try to sue Nascimento. He would regret it.

 Like many of us who have lived through or migrated from Guyana to escape the terrifying years of Burnham, Rabbi Washington and the House of Israel, the unbroken sequence of rigged elections, a destroyed economy, food shortages and incompetence on a grand scale, Nascimento is clearly determined that his vote must be counted and fears the return to those dark days. This is theft from him of a basic human right and Granger’s conduct makes him an integral part of that scheme. Nascimento was an observer at the March 2 elections and witnessed first-hand how Mingo and Volda Lawrence put their signatures to a fraudulent document which Keith Lowenfield accepted and elevated and to which David Granger, Vincent Alexander and Joseph Harmon, all men of integrity, honesty and decency, shut their ears, eyes and mouths and I suppose, their conscience. Instead, this group wants Granger to be declared by Claudette Singh as President on a fraud.   Having said that however, I wish to take issue with Nascimento on a small but in my view highly significant statement in his letter, to wit “Ms. Singh does not necessarily have to recognise the recount…“ In this regard, I respectfully refer Mr. Nascimento to the Aide Memoire signed by Granger, Jagdeo and the CARICOM Secretary General. More for the benefit of readers than for Mr. Nascimento, here are the three operative points set out in that document:

• “That a total recount of all ballots from all electoral districts in Regions 1 to 10 would take place urgently (emphasis theirs) in accordance with the Constitution, the applicable law and the judgement of the court issued by Roxane George Chief Justice (ag.) on Wednesday 11th of March 2020.

• “That the high-level team would supervise the recount under the auspices of GECOM and would not engage themselves in the actual counting of ballots. Their presence is to ensure that the recount is done in a free, fair, transparent and credible manner”; and critically

• “To abide by the outcome of a fair and transparent process for the recount.”

Clearly bullet point three binds Claudette Singh and GECOM to a declaration based solely on the recount. Granger and Claudette Singh cannot be so incapable as to not understand plain English. The Aide Memoire is not just a piece of paper to be ignored at will. It has democratic, constitutional and international law implications. Granger is infamous for double and multiple speak and for serial violations of the country’s Constitution and other laws. This is not a circus to amuse and deceive Guyanese.

Any attempt by Claudette Singh to violate the Constitution, the applicable law and the judgment of the court issued by Roxane George Chief Justice (ag.) on Wednesday 11th of March 2020, and by Granger to circumvent this Aide Memoire would have consequences far more grave than their reputations. 

Yours faithfully,

Christopher Ram

This Article was Published on the June 1. 2020

Claudette Singh, GECOM Chair has now confirmed a statement by APNU+AFC’s GECOM commissioner Vincent Alexander reported in the media on Saturday May 30. In that statement, Alexander had said that Singh had written the Chief Immigration Officer to seek confirmation of a list provided by APNU of persons who were out of Guyana on elections day but for whom votes were fraudulently cast. PPP/C Commissioner Sase Gunraj had been reported in the same media article as stating not only that GECOM had made no such decision, but that he as an opposition Commissioner was not even aware of any correspondence from APNU. 

As the recount drags on, Singh’s integrity and competence are being called into serious question. It is now a matter of public knowledge that Singh had written the Commissioner of Police one week earlier for the very purpose stated by Alexander. He knew, but not the opposition Commissioners. The subject matter is a policy issue for a seven-person Commission not as Singh thinks, a one-person dictatorship. From the language and the details in the recitals to Order 60, it is clear that its drafting required the knowledge and expertise of someone fully conversant with the detailed operational aspects of elections. That someone is Vincent Alexander. It is hard to say which is correct but this matter reveals that Alexander is either Singh’s confidante or she is his poodle.

This issue is another example of Singh leading the electoral body like a circus. Here is why. APNU collaborated with its illegal MP and Minister of Citizenship Winston Felix to obtain from the Immigration Department travel information of certain persons on the Official List of Electors. With the information thus obtained, APNU passed the information to its agents in the recount. Then the information finds its way on the Observation Reports which are then passed to the Chief Election Officer. Confident that the information now forms part of the records of GECOM, election agent Joseph Harmon then writes Singh officially while issuing threats and dog whistles publicly. To complete the literally vicious circle, Singh then writes the Chief Immigration Officer asking him to confirm the information of which he is the source!  

Lawyers use the term “probative value” often to challenge the quality of legal evidence. Auditors use the term “appropriateness” to measure the relevance and reliability of audit evidence. Seemingly intent on embarking on an investigation into whether or not GECOM has carried out its constitutional duty Claudette Singh is creating another brand of evidence which will get her into the history books. But she is taking a dangerous path. 

Here are a few reasons: Investigating any errors, flaws or deficiencies concerning the results of elections is for the exclusive jurisdiction of the High Court. Related to that is the well-known principle that one cannot be a judge in one’s own cause. As a retired judge Claudette Singh cannot not know that. Or has she fallen for Harmon’s dangerous threat about calm? And now that she has evidence of questionable value from the Commissioner of Police, will her investigation dispense with the right to be heard rule?  

Singh has ineptly reversed the burden of proof and kowtows to the APNU. So, with the authority or knowledge only of Alexander, she has assumed the onus of proof in that Party’s fake allegations. Would she now call the Commissioner of Police and all the GECOM staff and parties agents involved to give evidence and how will she treat with any rebuttals from Harmon’s/James’ list of persons? And finally, would Singh tell us what standard of proof she will insist on in this clandestine inquiry and wonder whether she is aware of the House of Lords case, In Re B (Children) (Fc) Appellate Committee? I ask these questions to show the absurdity of the path that the self-described Iron Lady has secretly and illegally chosen.     

Singh is trying her best to stretch this thing out. But as the Addendum to Order 60 acknowledges, GECOM is required to make a “declaration of the results on the final credible count of the elections”. There is no room for APNU’s David Hinds’ draw and thankfully, the possibility for realising his call for the destruction of the ballot boxes is fast disappearing. Once the tabulation of the Statements of Recounts is completed, the Mingo/Lawrence/Lowenfield declaration for District Four will die a natural death. The day of reckoning is fast approaching.

It will not end well for Claudette Singh’s reputation

Was Published on the May 31, 2020

As matters now stand, ninety days after the March 2020 elections, the wish of the Granger-led APNU+AFC is that Claudette Singh will deliver to it a victory denied by the electorate. That party has reason to be optimistic. Claudette Singh voted against eight and one-half of the ten motions brought by the opposition-appointed GECOM commissioners; was present on both occasions when Mingo made his transparently fraudulent District 4 declaration; compounded that failure by keeping that declaration live; insisted on a recount Order (# 60 of 2020) in violation of the Aide Memoire of the agreement signed by Granger, Jagdeo and CARICOM chair; and allowed herself to be transformed into a figure of national derision by Lowenfield, Roxanne Myers and the COVID Task Force.

There is fear that the allocation of stations in the Recount Order and Addendum of May 29 as they become available seems designed to ensure that the recount will be a replay of Mingo’s District Four fiasco with the difference being that that this time, the main actors will be Lowenfield and Myers. The same Myers who was installed through the instrumentality of Granger’s illegally appointed James Patterson.

Having shared with Singh the date of appointment as Senior Counsel by Granger, Basil Williams is playing to Singh by praising her eminent qualifications and wealth of experience as a judge. He now seeks to encourage Claudette Singh to function as judge and jury, executor and arbitrator, public authority and tribunal. Again, Singh is so predictably unpredictable that she may very well admit that she and her Commissioners have failed in their duty to supervise elections in accordance with their constitutional mandate! 

Ignoring the basic principle that he who asserts must prove, Williams is now saying that it is GECOM’s responsibility to investigate APNU’s outlandish claims of discrepancies involving between 90,000 votes according to Aubrey Norton, and as much as 175,000 by Joseph Harmon. The claim being peddled by Harmon and Norton in particular, is simple in its inanity: take any box and raise a single question about one vote, and hey, the entirety of the votes in that box becomes discredited. What Harmon, Norton and Williams lack in intellect, commonsense and consistency, is over-compensated for by bullyism, deceit and force. 

With no evidence produced, Norton reduces his argument to absurdity by claiming that there were only 1,261 foreign voters or 65% of the Coalition’s 1,937 claims of irregularities, reminding me of my days doing Economics in school and being taught that spurious accuracy earns credibility. Unfortunately, Norton did not provide particulars of the irregularities involving the other 676 dead voters who arose from eternal sleep in the blissful Le Repentir, found their way to various polling stations, past the police, presiding officer and party agents, voted and then returned to their peaceful abode.  

Basil Williams has cited expansively the several recitals in the Recount Order but very conveniently ignores part of the recital that speaks of “statistical anomalies” which Harmon and Norton seem not to acknowledge or to understand. Let us try to help them.

1.  Each Polling Station has three GECOM officials – a presiding officer, a poll clerk and a counting agent. GECOM therefore had 7,017 officials in 2,339 polling stations. Add to that the 2,339 APNU+AFC Polling Agents and for the smaller parties 233 agents, being one out of every ten polling stations. That gives a grand total of 9,589 non-PPP persons. What is the statistical probability of not one of these 9,589 persons detecting a single one of the many thousands who according to Harmon, Norton and Williams committed impersonation on March 2, 2020?

2.  The indelible ink used to mark a voter’s index finger takes days and weeks to disappear or wash out. What is the statistical probability of even 1% of Norton’s 80,000 cleaning off their ink and finding someone looking like them, with a matching ID card turning up at these polling stations again and getting past 9,589 persons? Not to mention the 2,339 police officers standing at the entrance of the polling stations to deter various forms of voting offences. 

3.   What is the statistical probability of all these cases of double voting timing their entry to the hundreds of polling stations so as to avoid the visits by the scores of foreign and local observers including those from the pro-Government GPSU?

4.  What is the statistical probability of the APNU+AFC dominated GECOM Secretariat led by Lowenfield and Myers employing not one, not one hundred, not one thousand, but 7,017 individuals who could possibly be so inept not to detect a single anomaly on voting day?  

5.  What is the statistical probability of all 2,339 APNU+AFC polling agents being so collectively incompetent, blind, dumb and asleep unable to detect or report a single case of the type of anomaly of which the APNU+AFC recounting agents are now claiming took place on a scale so massive that the elections are no longer credible? 

6.  The PPP/C gained 202,000 votes in 2015 and 232,000 votes in 2020. If we take away Harmon’s 86,000 votes from the PPP/C’s 2020 votes, they are left with 146,000 votes. What is the statistical probability of a Party that had thrashed the APNU and the AFC in November 2018 municipal elections by a margin of 1.8:1 losing 37% of its voter support between 2015 and 2020?

7.  If Harmon’s 86,000 figure is correct it means that 20% of the votes cast in 2020 are invalid. What is the statistical probability of one out of every five votes cast being unlawful in a thoroughly paper-based elections? 

Like Williams, I am relying on the skewed Order 60 that was rigged away from a recount to a farcical audit. The foolishness being peddled by Harmon, Norton and Williams and their Recount agents cannot pass the commonsense test. GECOM ought not to have encouraged and accepted such nonsense in the first place. When all these statistical probabilities are added together, they have moved to the realm of impossibility. Note that I am using a matrix clearly consistent with Order 60.

I will not presume to tell Claudette Singh what she should do with the recurring theme of unsubstantiated anomalies in the Observation Reports. It is clear that they have no merit. But so too was the fraudulent tabulation of Mingo, Volda Lawrence and Lowenfield which Claudette Singh has preserved rather than investigate. Instead, quite outside of her and GECOM’s jurisdiction, she is pursuing baseless allegations in violation of her own principle in the Esther Perreira case that he who asserts must prove.

Finally, I draw attention to the opinion of Chief Justice Roberts of the US Supreme Court in a decision handed two days ago in a COVID-19 related case: improbability and its converse are fundamental to the determination of litigated issues.