From villain to heroine
Chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission, Justice Claudette Singh, was one of the most vilified people in Guyana. She was abused to the point of being described as a bastard child.
Everyone and his dog that sat in the opposition corner took aim at Claudette Singh. She was renamed Fraudette, accused of sitting idly by while the other target, Clairmont Mingo, was accused of perpetrating fraud.
Some columnists said that Justice Singh should be jailed, some said that she destroyed her reputation, and still others accused her of being racist. Freddie Kissoon wrote that Justice Singh saw herself as Afro-Guyanese and that she was related to Lincoln Lewis.
But in one swell swoop, Justice Singh has become the greatest woman on earth. Diehard supporters of the People’s Progressive Party now say that they could hug her.
Bharrat Jagdeo, interesting enough, was perhaps one of the most condescending. In a press statement issued soon after the GECOM Chair declined to nullify the elections, the PPP literally rushed to kiss her feet. One would believe that she was their knight in shining armour all along.
“The PPP wishes to commend the GECOM Chair, retired Justice Claudette Singh, for standing on the side of rule of law and upholding the Constitution of Guyana.” So she is no longer Fraudette, nor is she a pariah.
The harsh reality of life is that one is only favoured when the observer enjoys one’s service. Rest assured, there will be harsh words for the Chief Elections Officer.
He is now the one the entire opposition wants to see jailed. When former Chief Elections Officer Gocool Boodhoo was in Lowenfield’s chair, he did the gods. Any objection by the then opposition was met with “Go for an elections petition.”
That was the man who deliberately miscalculated votes to the extent that he gave the PPP one extra seat in the National Assembly. That seat was actually win by the Alliance For Change but Boodhoo decided otherwise.
For 23 years the PPP governed Guyana on the back of fraudulent elections. Strange, no one has ever accused that party of electoral fraud. Even now when the fraudulent measures were exposed no one said anything—not a diplomat, not a foreign observer and certainly, not a spokesperson for the White House.
The temptation is to assign racial overtones to their reaction but then again, that may merely be an observation.
