Category: Uncategorized

This was Published on June 16, 2020

Dear Editor,

Fifteen weeks following the March 2, 2020 general and regional elections, it seems that the process is coming to a close. This is despite the release of two conflicting reports submitted to the Guyana Elections Commission within the space of two days: the first by the Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield who has a statutory function under the Representation of the People Act and the other by the CARICOM Scrutinising Team. Guyana owes a debt of gratitude to the three individuals who slogged away for thirty-three days without interruption or any sign of flagging to help restore trust in our electoral system. President Granger praised then as “the most legitimate interlocutor on the Guyana situation” and the members of the team as competent to produce work of an international standard. Granger publicly expressed the wish that he would like them to succeed.

It was clear that Keith Lowenfield went way outside of his remit as set out in the recount Order and made findings and conclusions that had no legal basis, even though his report was endorsed by no less a luminary than Attorney General Basil Williams. I want to believe that Lowenfield made an innocent mistake in failing to understand what a summary is or the scope of his report. Mr. Lowenfield is not an attorney and is probably not aware of the provisions of Article 163 which makes the High Court the exclusive arbiter of matters relating to elections. More troublingly however is that Lowenfield felt it was in his power to disenfranchise close to 275,000 voters or 60% of those who voted. He does not understand the principle of presumption of legality and the onus and burden of proof. Had he been better advised those legally elementary mistakes could have been avoided as well as the ridicule being thrown at him.

The CARICOM Scrutinising Team has now made his own report into a series of amateurish mistakes and it is now up to GECOM how to reconcile the two. Both reports are now being “deliberated on” by GECOM whose chairperson coincidentally is a retired judge. Despite the origin of their appointments, she and the other six commissioners are under oath to honour, uphold and preserve the Constitution. She more than they would recognise that they do have a fiduciary obligation to the electorate and to conduct themselves without fear or favour, affection or goodwill.

As it is the Commissioners are political appointees under an independent chairperson. It would be truly unfortunate and unhelpful to our democracy if the chairperson is forced to use a casting vote and it would go some way in restoring trust in the factions of the electorate if the chairperson can persuade her fellow commissioners to avoid a vote and rather come to an agreement by consensus. As a long-standing Judge she no doubt has years of experience in the adversarial court system and persuading rival sides to compromise. 

But there is one person who carries an even greater role and influence and that is the APNU+AFC Presidential candidate David Granger. The elections were hard fought but it is time to bring it to an end. It is in the nature of competitive politics that one side seeks to persuade the electorate that it is more deserving of their vote than the other side. While defeat is always painful, it must never be dishonourable and Granger will go a long way in restoring his credibility and the dignity of the high office he holds if he would call the PPP/C’s presidential candidate to congratulate him, wish him well but signify to him that the Opposition is a legitimate part of the head table called the National Assembly.

Granger must rest assured that all the young people whose voices came to the fore were fighting not for the PPP/C but for democracy.

The impending end of the electoral cycle solves only one of our country’s problems. We still have to deal with the coronavirus and now we are told that our Treasury is empty. The World Court will soon be engaged in our long-festering issue with Venezuela. Our differences should end at our borders and both President-elect Irfaan Ally and outgoing President Granger as nationalists must both work towards the preservation of our sovereignty and territorial wholeness.

There is a lot resting on the shoulders of the GECOM commissioners and they need to put political differences aside and put Guyana first. But with Granger rests the opportunity and the duty to place the national interest over partisan interest. 

Yours faithfully,

Christopher Ram

This was Published on June 14, 2020

Dear Editor,

Forty years and one day ago, the people of Guyana witnessed the assassination of one of the country’s greatest sons, Dr. Walter Rodney, the inspirational voice of the WPA. The unmistakeable hands of PNC Founder Leader Forbes Burnham, through the instrumentality of the Guyana Defence Force, were found on the figurative trigger. What caused Burnham to proceed to such an extreme measure was that his series of rigged elections had been exposed internationally, much to his embarrassment. With the security of unchallenged power, Burnham and his PNC pursued policies which ruined the economy of the most resource-rich country of the Caribbean. It required the support of the Americans and the British to facilitate the return of democracy in Guyana. It required the intervention of the IMF, the World Bank and other donor agencies and countries to restore viability to the Guyana economy.

We seem destined for another assassination. This time not of a single or a few persons, but of a nation, of democracy, of the right to vote and to have that vote counted. In an act of extreme cynicism, historian David Granger and wannabe heir to the Burnham curse, chose the anniversary of Burnham’s assassination of Rodney to make his own mark on history.

In the culmination of a move by Granger four years ago to hijack the elections machinery by the unlawful installation of former judge James Patterson as the head of GECOM, the Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield gave Granger his wish by declaring that he could not ascertain that “the recount results meet criteria of fair, credible elections”. Here is a man who has been employed by GECOM for approximately two decades, who has supervised the spending of around fifteen billion dollars ($15 billion), admitting that he is incapable of carrying out his basic function. His incompetence however has implications beyond $15 billion. It will cost this country its democracy. 

From the top, there was Vincent Alexander who steered through the recount Order that made APNU+AFC agents into unsworn witnesses and Lowenfield the one-man tribunal. And there was the Deputy Elections Officer brought in by Patterson to carry out the `work’ from the inside with able assistance from Aubrey Norton and others from the outside. Of course, Lowenfield and his deputy were not short of cues from Granger and his paid defilers of democracy.

A cursory read of Lowenfield’s report could easily have been taken from Granger’s hymnbook. Just one night before Lowenfield chose to submit his report – he was working on it for an almost forty biblical days – Granger had told a radio interview that there were 7,929 instances of irregularities – approximately three per polling station – and that those directly affected the validity of 257,173 votes or more that 56% of the votes cast in the elections! This is precisely Lowenfield’s line as the following extract from his report shows:

“A total of eighty-six boxes stand affected due to a total of three hundred and thirty-eight anomalies and/or alleged voter impersonation. In other words, approximately 75% of all votes cast for general elections are associated with boxes that stand to be impacted due to either anomalies and/or voter impersonation. Specifically, 3% of the votes cast were impacted by anomalies, while 55% were impacted by voter impersonation, and 17% impacted by both anomalies/irregularities and voter impersonation”.

Lowenfield thinks that his outlandish findings that 56 out of every 100 votes have been tainted by impersonation are more credible than the outstanding work on Elections Day by all the GECOM officials, APNU+AFC officials, party officials and domestic and international observers. According to Lowenfield, APNU+AFC has 125,000 untainted votes while the PPP/C has 56,000 votes! In a mathematical act of insanity, Lowenfield is disenfranchising about six out of every ten voters. He was Granger’s man and like Gregory Smith did for Burnham, he has worked beyond the call of duty. Mingo is now the lesser of two mischief makers. He made the APNU+AFC the winner via a fraudulent declaration of Region 4. Lowenfield has made the APNU+AFC the winner based on the entire country. Based on Lowenfield’s report, his APNU+AFC actually earned more untainted votes than the PPP/C: 125,000 to 56,000. He has disenfranchised 60 per cent of the voters in the elections. Lowenfield was part of the Mingo fraud by elevating to the Commission Mingo’s fraudulent Region 4 declaration to which the world was exposed. Mingo’s place in the hall of infamy remains assured, now, Lowenfield has joined him, unmasking the real deal.

To show his unashamed bias, Lowenfield accepted without evidence or inquiry, every single allegation or challenge made by the APNU+AFC during the recount. At the same time, his report does not even acknowledge that the other contesting parties had objected to or rebutted many of those spurious and unfounded allegations. In fact, there are reports that many GECOM officials refused to include on the Observation Reports the rebuttals to the APNU+AFC’s made-up allegations. 

If GECOM Chair Claudette Singh does not intervene to stop Lowenfield’s inchoate attempt at assassinating elections in Guyana, Guyana will suffer from the absence of free and fair elections perhaps for decades to come. Unless she and her commissioners act to reverse Lowenfield’s finding, June 13’s claim for being a day of national disgrace in Guyana is doubly assured.

Yours faithfully,

Christopher Ram 

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