Life in Guyana has changed radically for many. Bars are almost all closed, fast food outlets do not have lines and for sure, no school is open. Traffic has been drastically reduced on the streets and just about anyone seen walking on the streets have a mask.
Forget the air travel that had become so much a part of the lives of Guyanese. The car park at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport has never been so void of vehicles. People simply do not need to transport friend or relative to the airport.
Last year at this time parents would have been saving up to get a new outfit for their school children who would have been moving on to a higher level of learning. The National Grade Six examinations would have been over.
Everything has been put back because of a vicious strain of the coronavirus. Just a few short months ago people were reading about an outbreak in China. Social media carried videos of people collapsing and dying on the streets of Wuhan, China.
And while those videos were circulating Guyanese basked in the knowledge that they were so far away and therefore could not be affected. There were even elections in March, some three months after the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.
Little did people know that days after the elections Guyana would have recorded its first case. A woman traveled from Queens, New York, came into the country, met with doctors at two city hospitals and died. A test for the coronavirus confirmed the worse. Coronavirus had arrived.
Most were not worried. There were those of us who believed that the climate would have protected us. There were reports that the hot weather would have killed the virus that had now become known as COVID-19.
Perhaps the heat does kill the virus but that does not stop person-to-person transfer. We are in a crowded place and one infected person is among us, rest assured the virus would spread. And spread it did.
Now people everywhere seem to be contracting the virus. There are those of us who take every precaution but there are others who care precious little. Perhaps it is the syndrome that propels thieves to enter people’s homes or to commit some of the crimes they do.
There are people out there who believe that they are exempt from certain measures. I still see crowds liming at bars and gathering at house parties in parts of the city. Indeed, most of the people gathered are men. This would explain why more men are infected with CIVID-19 than women.
As the recount is progressing I cannot help but notice that some people still believe that COVID-19 is a joke. The Guyana Elections Commission agreed to ten counting stations that would attract no more than one hundred and eighty people.
The People’s Progressive Party had campaigned for twenty stations. As if to prove that more people could be accommodated inside the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, at least 400 crowded the venue. Indeed some of these were ancillary staff like the police and the cleaners, but that number was still too large.
There are now twelve counting stations and the possibility of two more. If this is going to quicken the recount while ensuring that the people working there remain safe, so be it.
There are people who are asymptomatic—displaying no symptoms—but can spread the virus. At the same time I have noticed that people who were infected but recovered are denying ever being infected. There is no shame; COVID-19 is not AIDS.
But denial is the name of the game and it continues throughout the recount. I remember the contention that only the District Four box should be counted. The noise surrounding this contention was deafening. Fortunately, every district is being counted. Attempts at rigging are being discovered from the opposition side.
However, if one were to rely on the news media and social media one would never know this. The Official list of Electors from one polling booth ended up in another. How?
These lists could not move on their own so there had to be collusion between presiding officers. They have so far failed to present themselves before the commission. But the critics are making no mention of this.
Kit Nascimento, who in a letter on Friday said that he witnessed the Mingo fraud twice, has said nothing about this. Perhaps he did not witness it but GECOM reported it and he must have heard about it. He was at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre to the point of addressing the media to correct, as he said, information that Cathy Hughes presented.
Each day the coalition agents report on dead people voting and on people who have migrated actually casting their ballots in Guyana. This will be addressed by GECOM but the opposition-backed critics are saying nothing. Everybody seems focused on Clairmont Mingo who in his own deliberate judgement, according to them, fiddled with the numbers.
It could not be a case of the presiding officers actually presenting those so called inflated numbers to Mr. Clairmont Mingo.
Disrespect is a hallmark of people opposed to the coalition or those who were paid to champion the PPP cause. I will talk about this later. In one case the sum of US$25,000 was reportedly paid to a very vocal critic of the coalition.
Then there are the unstamped ballots. The presiding officers knew that an unstamped ballot would be deemed invalid. Here is where the opposition mischief is most evident. Those unstamped ballots contained votes cast for the coalition.
GECOM will examine this issue and allot the votes where they should go. I expect a noise about GECOM breaking the law. I will hear all manner of complaints but none about the mischief that would spark the complaint.
Missing poll books, people voting without oaths of affidavit and no identification cards in PPP areas, and missing counterfoils to match the ballots cast are all part of the exercise to promote the cause of the opposition.
Meanwhile, the attacks against the Chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission appear to have subsided. Some praise is actually being directed at the commission. It matters not that one commissioner decided that he could speak for the Chairperson.
Why this action has not been commented on needs no explanation. Had the chairperson said nothing, then taken a decision on the issue of the allegations before the commission, she would have been hounded to hell and even further.
And for the records, as for me being a paid mouthpiece “of the PNC’s grab for fraudulent power”. Indeed I have always been PNC and I never made a secret of my political affiliation. I have all my life been a professional journalist and that will not change.
But as for being a paid mouthpiece, I wish Nascimento could identify my paymaster. My views are in the open for free. I am not sure Nascimento could say the same thing.
And Kit, for now, we may be on the opposite side of the fence but I am still the same Adam Harris you considered your friend.
