This could well be the PNC’s last hurrah

Dear Editor,

Over the past months, the words “evil” and wicked” have surfaced as descriptions of the acts of fraud being attempted by the PNC and its co-conspirators in the ongoing postelection crisis.

These words do not, perhaps, go far enough to depict what we are all witnessing as the PNC and its collaborators in APNU, the AFC, GECOM, the Guyana Police Force, and elsewhere try to carry out their plan to steal an entire election before the watching world.

Guyana is governed by both secular laws and by the doctrines of the world’s great religions since most of our citizens are among the faithful who believe in either Hindu dharma, Islam, or Christianity. The independence of our judiciary is now in question and with secular laws, which are crafted to try and curtail our worst inclinations in jeopardy, it is time to also consider how much the words and deeds of the PNC and its cabal transgress the teachings of our great religions.

There might be some didacticism involved here but the situation warrants a look at the nature of sin itself, which, in Christianity, arises from a departure of what is an acceptable standard of behaviour, that behaviour being inclusive of righteousness and lawful conduct. Hindu philosophy teaches that such good conduct brings about happiness, peace and stability while wrongdoing, greed, vice and crudity result in despair, the very kind of despair that currently obtains across the country due to the seemingly interminable post-elections shenanigans.

Islamic tenets support the idea that it is the greatest tragedy for anyone to turn away from belief in God and that the unbeliever degenerates into a slave of his own base desires as his life becomes consumed by evil and corruption.

Even those who do not subscribe to any formal religion still expect ethical and moral conduct from our leaders based on what is considered goodness in a universally acceptable sense. They would also agree that sinfulness lies not only in the betrayal of a nation’s trust but in the lack of shame and good conscience that would prick and distress any decent and civilised being but which seem woefully lacking in the PNC and its collaborators as they press on with their transgressions.

David Granger and his political

allies knew that they had lost the election since the evening of March 2nd last but no truth or fact has derailed them from their dastardly plot to betray the will of the majority in order to cling to illegitimate power.

Must we not all wonder: what manner of people are these? As calls are being made for some kind of inclusive government once the legitimately elected PPP/C administration takes office, should the citizenry not ask: how can we trust any member of the PNC, APNU or AFC with any leadership role especially since we know, as with the PNC after its previous iteration as a dictatorship, that there will be no admittance of wrongdoing and no remorse for any of the criminal acts of fraud.

Three times have the PNC and its cabal presented fraudulent figures to support their claim that the APNU/AFC won the election and, each time, their “victory” has rested on making thousands of PPP/C supporters – those are, by and large, Indian Guyanese – invisible, non-existent, even dead.

I have been among the Indian Guyanese who for decades have spoken about our marginalisation in the nation’s cultural and social arena where a token presence reduces us to exotica and makes us practically invisible.

The PNC and its cohorts have now taken these moves into the political sphere. By disenfranchising thousands of Indian Guyanese, they make us non-existent and gain the election victory they covet. To win by stealth does not appear to shame or bother them.

The PNC does appear to accept that it can never win an election by fair means; and this as long as it refuses to reform itself in order to appeal to voters outside of its minority partisan base.

Is this desperate clinging to power, then, the PNC’s last hurrah? And will we have to simply give them room to play out their disgraceful saga to its finality?

Yours faithfully, Ryhaan Shah