Mr Harmon and the Election Petition
On Monday Chief Justice (ag) Roxane George-Wiltshire threw out the petition which had been brought by APNU+AFC challenging the results of the March 2nd 2020 elections. In January, she had dismissed the other petition the party had filed because its presidential candidate David Granger had not been served on time. If voters feel that the long drawn-out saga of last year’s elections has now finally reached its denouement, they should think again. The main opposition has every intention of prolonging this charade further.
The same day that the Chief Justice handed down her ruling, Opposition Leader Joseph Harmon made clear the party’s intention to appeal. “We must and will lodge an appeal against this atrocious decision of the High Court. We must appeal this at every level until justice is delivered to us,” Mr Harmon was quoted as saying. If that were not bad enough, what he said next went well beyond the boundaries of acceptable commentary, even if he were genuinely of the view that the judgment was without merit, which not everyone is persuaded that he is.
“This is a clear attempt to protect the installed PPP regime from scrutiny and from being removed from government where they have no right being… this decision is not about justice, this is not about the people of Guyana, this is not about what is right, this is not about democracy, this is not about you. It is about protecting the status quo – no matter how corrupt that status quo is,” the Opposition Leader said.
He went on to repeat claims about widespread irregularities on Election Day, insisting that the whole world saw that the elections were “flawed and fraudulent.” Advancing the position that the opposition’s case was “well presented and airtight,” he went on to allege that “Their case [that of the party’s lawyers] was solid, but the system ruled against them as it ruled against us.”
This is quite extraordinary if it were not so reprehensible. Could these really be the words of a man who leads the main Opposition? Is he indeed so divorced from reality that he has not yet discovered that the whole world, far from regarding the elections as “flawed and fraudulent” has deemed them free and fair? If he were an ordinary human being who appeared to have lost touch with the real world, rather than a senior politician in a leadership capacity, questions would be asked about his ability to distinguish objective truth from his own imaginary constructs.
The problem is that most people, including, one suspects, a large number of his party’s own constituency, think that he is perfectly capable of telling the difference between what is reality and what is a product of the imagination in this instance. In other words, he knows the truth and is just engaged in an exercise of outrageous cynicism if not hypocrisy. It is this, perhaps, which accounts for the intemperate and defamatory character of his comments, which represent a vain attempt to substitute vilification for acceptance of the inevitable.
What was particularly discreditable was the implication in his remarks that the judiciary was compromised, and did not find on the evidence presented. As a lawyer he must know that at a minimum this borders on contempt of court. But even if that were not so, the entire legal fraternity as well as all rational beings know that his remarks in this regard were nothing more than gibberish.
But the Opposition Leader was not finished. In his statement he also said that his party had continuously called on their people to keep the peace, to stay calm and to uphold the law, but because of the ruling they will not be held “responsible for the reaction of the victimised, disenfranchised and marginalised masses.” He was quoted as going on to say: “We must continue to be resilient and stand firm against injustice… our struggle is just and righteous and the struggle must continue… We will continue to fight and we wish to make it clear that all options remain open to us.”
This is beyond belief. It reads as though it is in the order of a veiled threat, and if that is not the intention, it should never have been said. As for continuously calling on supporters to keep the peace, perhaps Mr Harmon would like to advert his mind back to the West Coast Berbice protests last year when he and Mr Granger were doing the opposite of calling for their supporters to keep the peace. It was party Chairperson Volda Lawrence who fulfilled the peacekeeping role on that occasion.
One might have thought that the best course of action after losing the current case would be for the party to express its regrets about the outcome and then put it aside and proceed to operate like a conventional opposition. But no, after Mr Harmon has disgraced his party with his reaction, APNU+AFC is now to go to appeal. The question which has to be asked is, what on earth for, when it is clear to everyone that the petition will not secure a different result at the higher level from the one handed down by the High Court.
Perhaps the leadership doesn’t want to disabuse their constituents of the fiction that they won the election so they do not have to feel they failed in some way and can play the part of victim. Alternatively, perhaps it is more of a face-saving device after all the clamour about having been cheated, or perhaps it is a bit of both. Either way, it is not a strategy designed to make for responsible representation of the party’s constituency, or responsible criticism of government, which is the job of any genuine opposition. What can be said is that the louder and more persistent Mr Harmon is, the harder it becomes for the party to back down.
As suggested earlier, it is difficult to believe that the majority of those who voted APNU+AFC really take Mr Harmon’s statements overly seriously, and it is even harder to believe that the members of the Central Executive Committee and those who frequent Sophia do. One might have thought that it was time for those at the heart of the party to cease indulging the leadership in its pursuit of this irrational strategy. Whatever else it is, it is not a path back to legitimate office.
There is one curious element in all of this which might not be quite in tandem with Mr Harmon’s statements, and that is the position of the leader of APNU, Mr David Granger. In a party interview broadcast last Friday about the feasibility of holding Congress this year, he said, “What was announced on August 2 is not a defeat. It has encouraged me to do a closer review and introspection, which is why I’ve been going out into the regions. I’ve been doing outreaches to rebuild the party structure and work towards regaining office.”
This sounds far more like the more traditional approach to parties out of office, which are working towards contesting the next election in the traditional way. If that is indeed what is in Mr Granger’s mind, it needs to be communicated to Mr Harmon without delay.