Dear Editor,
Impressive and inspired are those writings addressing the issue of GECOM commissioners. There’s collision with stonewalls. No PNCR commissioner is moving. The fact of public writings, positions taken, actions recommended confirm the existence of those stonewalls of resistance. Immovable. Apply whatever force believed necessary. No PNCR leader is flexing. No PNCR commissioner is resigning on his own. Unbelievable. There I stand. Troubling in messages sent.
What message is sent to citizens? It is okay to lose, but still lining up to claim a prize is right. Is a right. Taken to the extreme ends of Guyana’s electoral arithmetic, that claim, that reasoning, would still rule, if not a single seat is held in parliament. Going beyond the beyond, if not a single vote was gained. Something doesn’t add here. Loose strings, like persistently irritating specks in the eye, that don’t leave. If I tell fellow citizens to walk straight, play fair, and obey the will of the people, and am still looking to hang on to what is politically weak, what redounds to my discredit, then what the hell am I about? Who am I? What standards set for Guyana’s largest demographic, the young?
I have absorbed provisions in the Constitution read this way and that way. Laws crafted. Rules made. And procedures to bolster. Whether all three are at their comprehensive best, or lacking in compelling power, there is still, there is always, what’s failsafe. Failsafe, even tamper resistant, because it is of infallible and nonnegotiable standing when it confronts honourable men and women. The constitution that is written within, deeply and inerasably. The laws that are carved out and followed. Because they are of my mind and my hand. For those come from the internal texts that form the basis for rules and the procedures that are followed. Win, lose, or draw. If when those tests of character come, I am found wanting, hedging, dodging, then I would not only have lost my head. There would be no face left to lose. The PNCR should think carefully of sinking so low.
I hear that there is no such creature as a good loser; that a good loser is a loser. I disagree. Today and anytime such a statement is made. What I have said repeatedly to PPP Govt leaders, I reemphasize to PNCR leaders. A man, a woman, must have a code by which he or she operates. It’s their personally inscribed Bible, Koran, Bhagavad Gita. In good times. In times that are so tough that there are no tears left. The spirit is that decimated. But it is on the tests of the worst times, that the best must come out. For then is when that code must be followed. In letter. Most of all, in its spirit. In other words, my personal constitution is more stringent, more demanding, more controlling than any national constitution, as robust as such may be.
The now forgotten side of this issue would be the 109,000 Guyanese who voted for WIN. When they are seen as mere election fodder, minor bowling balls to be pitched around, then I submit that all they are worthy of is being kicked from pillar to post, for all the regard that they command. So, who is representing them around GECOM’s table? The stronger question is: representing what? What generated so much disillusionment? What led to the electoral experimentation of Guyana’s desperate? The dreams of Guyana’s scorned and left out, the other side of One Guyana. When GECOM seats are disputed post September 2025, that’s not a fight for empowerment of poorly represented Guyanese. It’s fighting for self-perpetuation, self-enrichment.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
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