Violence, fraud in Guyana election

Press, 27 December 1985, Page 14

Violence, fraud in Guyana election

By

Tony Jenkins

in Georgetown, Guyana

Any hope the Guyanese Government may have had of changing its dictatorial reputation-with the recent General Elections is fading fast.

Mr Desmond Hoyte took over the presidency last August after the death of Mr Forbes Burnham whose 21-year reign as the revered “founder-leader” of the People’s National Congress saw the implementation of the worst of the P.N.C.’s bully-boy tactics in this Commonwealth country.

Now President Hoyte’s close aides are busily telling journalists and diplomats that their man is “clean.” One said: “He’s a moderate, but he has to move slowly to avoid a backlash from the Bumhamites.”

Mr Hoyte himself is trying to foster his image as the mild, distinguished, and plausible statesman who is trying to curb his party’s excesses. In an interview he said: “I want to raise the tone of political life, remove the areas of acrimony and violence.” The President’s defence against accusaations that the elections were fraudluent is threefold: that any irregularities were isolated, that the incidents were not sufficient to affect the outcome of the vote, and that his party’s leadership was not responsible for the few excesses that may have occured.

Unfortunately the evidence is continuing to mount that the President is wrong on all three counts. A joint statement has been made by the Anglican Bishop, the Roman Catholic Bishop, the co-president of the Human Rights Association, the assistant secretary of the Bar Association and four trade union leaders. The statement condemns: “The familiar and sordid catalogue of widespread disenfranchisement, multiple voting, ejection of polling agents, threats, intimidation, violence, and collusion by police and army personnel (which) characterised the poll.” This sweeping denunciation has been dismissed out of hand by President Hoyte: “The elections were above board,” he said, “totally free and fair.” He poured

scorn on the opposition calling his principal opponent “the once mighty Dr Jagan . . . who psyched himself into losing.” And he said: “We did everything we reasonably could. Every time I did something to accommodate the concerns of these (opposition) groups, they raised new matters.” Mr Hoyte claims that the bishops are unrepresentative and that they have a personal interest in attacking his regime. He says the opposition parties have carefully orchestrated excuses to justify their defeat. But the President’s comments cannot hide some of the more blatant evidence of the vote rigging. For example, on polling day in the village of Enmore, 15 miles from Georgetown, hundreds of supporters of Dr Cheddi Jagan’s People’s Progressive Party were turned away from the polling station.

One of the country’s senior lawyers testified that he followed a car full of P.N.C. supporters on election day and watched them vote time and again.

A priest, who asked to remain anonymous, wrote a two-page account of the fraud at the ballot station in his parish. He said there was “selective registration.” He estimated that 200 P.N.C. members were brought in from other districts to vote for a second time. A the end of the day he saw the ballot box being taken away by a P.N.C. activist.

In Guyana’s racially divided politics, dozens of members of the Indian community, who tend to support Dr Jagan, have been buttonholing journalists to complain that they were not allowed to vote or that “someone else” voted for them.

However Mr Eusi Kwayana, leader of the second largest opposition party, the Working People’s Alliance, admits that none of these tactics were sufficient to alter the eventual outcome of the vote. For him “the mischief was done after the poll.” He says independent observers were “brutally expelled” from the count.

He points out that if the results are to be believed in some dis-

tricts, not even the 120 people who nominated his candidates voted for the. W.P.A., “which is ridiculous.” , “ The secretary' of the “HumanRights Association, Mr Mike McCormack, agrees with Mr Kwayana. He describes the results as “totally noh-credible.” His major complaint is that there was such an inordinate delay between the close of the polls and the announcement of the results.

In the case of the capital, Georgetown, that delay was about 30 hours. Mr McCormack is convinced that the time was used to doctor the results on a massive scale.

The opposition’s major concern is what will happen next. Most leaders predict a wave of repression and arrrests. They say they are gearing up for a campaign of strikes and civil disobedience.

One thing is clear - that what the majority of Guyanese want for their political future was not determined in the elections.

Copyright — London Observer Service.