Georgetown: Former Barbadian Prime Minister and Chief of the Commonwealth Observer Mission to Guyana’s elections, Owen Arthur urged the loser of the Guyana elections to “accept these results and go onto a prosperous future.”
“I happened to have been there, so I do not speak from the perspective of hearsay. I had the privilege of leading my party into five elections, and three of those my party won. When my party won, I accepted with gratitude and grace and when my party lost, I accepted the will of the people. I felt that I was going so in a long tradition of Caribbean leaders. The men who led political parties in the country had taken their defeat despite having a tremendous standing in the country. We have had Caribbean leaders who had to gracefully accept defeat,” Arthur stated.
Of the 460,352 valid votes cast, the incumbent A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) has won 217,920 and the People’s Progressive Party 233,336. The three ‘joinder’ parties- A New and United Guyana (ANUG), Liberty and Justice Party (LJP) and The New Movement (TNM) got a total of 5,214 votes.
In Guyana’s regard, he said that he does not think Guyana should depart from such a tradition of gracefully accepting defeat.
“It is about accepting the will of the people. There is no graceful way to lose the public; you have to say it to your friends, colleagues, family. It can be very painful, but you have to remember that it is not a personal rejection and that the people have expressed their will; and the people are not condemning you by not voting for you, but they are saying that we want someone else to govern us.”
Asked whether the Community would welcome the Coalition in future, Arthur affirmed as he said that “there’s a generosity of spirit among Caribbean people; that we live and let live.”
The experiences of the Caribbean with past events of tragedy demonstrate the region’s ability to handle adversity well, Arthur believes.
He said “I think the strength will prevail, and that the people of Guyana will rise above this too. And you know it is, in all of this, there’s an aspect we’re not speaking about. But it will be good if the children of Africa and the children of India could live in another country as one.”
Meanwhile, he said that the eyes of the world are on the Chair of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), (ret’d) Justice Claudette Singh, as she holds the balance of power on the Commission and will be the decisive vote on the declaration of the results of Guyana’s March 2 General and Regional Elections.
Arthur said that though he has not had a lot of direct exposure to her, he has determined that she is gracious and that she would want to do what is right. He noted that Singh is under a lot of pressure.
“She’s aware that the eyes of the rest of the world are upon her. That matters to her. And I think that you will find that perhaps to be a saving grace. Her reputation is going to matter to her too,” Arthur said.
Despite this clear lead amassed by the PPP/C during what has been judged by all observers as a comparatively smooth election, the Coalition has argued, with thousands of unsubstantiated claims, that the elections were fraudulent and that the results of the recount cannot be declared as they are not credible.
Arthur said that if Singh makes a declaration contrary to the results of the recount, he would be respectful and wait for her to give a factual account of the basis upon which she made the decision.
“Because obviously, she would have had to make that decision on the basis of evidence, and she was a judge…” Arthur said. “I don’t know that there was ever a case in her professional career as a judge where she ever made a judgment on the basis of facts other than those that were presented in the case.”
The Mission Chief said that he left the experience satisfied that the people of Guyana could rely on the numbers contained in the statements of poll. Those numbers have thus far been vindicated by the statements of recount.
The Commonwealth Observer Mission had also met with the leadership of all of the parties, including the leadership of the Coalition Government, President David Granger and Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo.
“I did not hear of these kinds of things [claims of irregularities] in advance,” Arthur said.
In fact, Granger only explicitly registered his position on the claims of irregularities last night, during a radio interview. Before then, he had stayed largely quiet while the members of his Coalition cast aspersions on the process.
Arthur said yesterday that if Granger does not agree with what his colleagues are doing, then it would be the time to show strong leadership. But Granger, hours later, confirmed not that he disagreed with the claims being made, but that the positions being taken by the Coalition, including by APNU+AFC campaign co-chair Joseph Harmon, were his own.
Arthur posited though, that his memory of the process indicated that the Coalition, a political institution, had “the majority of people in control of GECOM”.
“And it would seem to me that it will be an astonishing thing for political institutions to have control of the process by which an election is being put in place,” Arthur said, “for that party to so have the election arranged, to lose the elections by having the process controverted by having dead people and other people made to vote.”
If he were associated with the Coalition, Arthur told Kaieteur Radio, he would not want to say that, “a mysterious force came in and took other the process that we were fully in control of… and caused it to be so manipulated to our disadvantage.”
People who would allow that to happen to themselves, he would suggest, are foolish people.
“And I don’t want to accuse Mr. Granger or Harmon of being dangerous,” Arthur said, “I am very circumspect in these matters. But I would rather not attribute to malice, that which can best be explained by ignorance.”
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