Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany

In an ar­ti­cle of re­mem­brance on April 8, 2015, the Guyana Chron­i­cle re­called the events of Ju­ly 16, 1973, when Guyana held its gen­er­al elec­tion. An ex­cerpt stat­ed:

“Mem­bers of the Guyana De­fence Force (GDF), in 1973, pro­ceed­ed to re­move bal­lot box­es from polling sta­tions for ‘safe­keep­ing’. The lives of Guyanese were lost pro­tect­ing bal­lot box­es. A mem­o­rable in­ci­dent is one that oc­curred at No. 63 Vil­lage, Coren­tyne. There, Ja­gan Rames­sar, 17, and Bhola­nauth Par­manand, 25, were shot by sol­diers while peace­ful­ly protest­ing the il­le­gal re­moval of the bal­lot box­es from the place of poll at the end of vot­ing. In­ter­na­tion­al re­ports on the elec­toral process of that year have con­clud­ed that the 1973 polls were not free and fair.”

There were oth­er memo­ri­als on those in­fa­mous 1973 Guyanese elec­tions when many bal­lot box­es from all over the coun­try were seized by the Guyana De­fence Force and the bal­lot count­ing was com­man­deered by the GDF.

On De­cem­ber 22, 1980, TIME Mag­a­zine, un­der a cap­tion that said “Guyana: Mag­ic Ma­jor­i­ty”, re­port­ed as fol­lows:

“In­deed. Since com­ing to pow­er af­ter Guyana gained its in­de­pen­dence from Britain in 1966, Burn­ham, an Ox­ford-trained lawyer, has of­ten been ac­cused of rig­ging his own elec­tion-day hero­ics. Crit­ics claim that in 1973 he padded his first post-in­de­pen­dence vic­to­ry with the votes of 70,000 dead or non-ex­ist­ing peo­ple. Guyana’s army seized the bal­lot box­es af­ter ini­tial re­turns seemed to be turn­ing against Burn­ham. When the re­sults were an­nounced a day lat­er, he had won a sat­is­fy­ing two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty.”

In­deed, on Ju­ly 25, 1973, the Trinidad Guardian re­port­ed the fol­low­ing un­der the cap­tion “Ja­maicans in Guyana polling” :

“A British tele­vi­sion pro­gramme last night ac­cused Guyanese Prime Min­is­ter, Mr Forbes Burn­ham, of con­duct­ing a gi­gan­tic elec­toral fraud in his ap­par­ent­ly suc­cess­ful cam­paign last week to win a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment...” (Page 2).

What was sig­nif­i­cant about this Ju­ly 16, 1973, gen­er­al elec­tion in Guyana was that it oc­curred just about two weeks af­ter the sign­ing of the Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas in Trinidad on Ju­ly 4, 1973. Cari­com failed its first elec­toral in­tegri­ty test two weeks af­ter its in­cep­tion. No con­dem­na­tion by Cari­com ever took place. It was busi­ness as usu­al, and that fraud has been avoid­ed for 50 years.

To­day, it seems as though Cari­com will now come un­der the mi­cro­scope of its own per­for­mance (or lack there­of) as the Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go, to­geth­er with two oth­er Cari­com coun­tries, were ex­clud­ed from the process of reap­point­ing the Cari­com Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, Dr Car­la Bar­nett. There has been no con­tra­dic­tion of this.

What has ap­par­ent­ly hap­pened is that the re­quired statu­to­ry num­bers for reap­point­ing the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al were sat­is­fied by a set up. The gov­er­nance process that ac­com­plished this was most un­sat­is­fac­to­ry and flawed.

The ob­vi­ous con­tretemps be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Dr Car­la Bar­nett over the lat­ter’s fail­ure to re­ply to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in her ca­pac­i­ty as leader of the op­po­si­tion in 2023, when rais­ing a le­git­i­mate mat­ter re­gard­ing the Brent Thomas ab­duc­tion from Bar­ba­dos, lies at the heart of this.

Then prime min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, said that she was out of place to write to Bar­nett about the mat­ter. Per­sad-Bisses­sar told him to butt out of her cor­re­spon­dence to the Cari­com Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al at the time.

With­out a prop­er process by which the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al was reap­point­ed, there will be mis­trust. It re­sem­bled a closed-door elite back­slap­ping ex­er­cise. Cari­com de­pends on a com­mit­ment of lo­cal tax­pay­er dol­lars to fund it. The on­ly way to get an­swers is to with­hold (or re­duce) the sub­ven­tion to get their at­ten­tion.

The main ques­tion that aris­es is whether or not any Leader of the Op­po­si­tion in any Cari­com coun­try, as a po­ten­tial fu­ture Prime Min­is­ter, is en­ti­tled to write to the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at to re­quest in­for­ma­tion on any mat­ter of cross-bor­der re­gion­al sig­nif­i­cance in­volv­ing their coun­try. Does Cari­com on­ly recog­nise mem­ber gov­ern­ments or should it recog­nise mem­ber coun­tries? Per­sad-Bisses­sar was en­ti­tled to get a re­sponse to her let­ter, re­gard­less of what Row­ley and Bar­nett thought about it.

There were many in Cari­com , and al­so lo­cal­ly, who nev­er be­lieved that Per­sad-Bisses­sar could ever re­turn to pow­er. That may have a lot to do with it.

Now that she is back, what was the re­al rea­son why T&T was ex­clud­ed, to­geth­er with two oth­er Cari­com coun­tries, from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the for­mal ses­sion when the reap­point­ment of Dr Car­la Bar­nett, as Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, was con­sid­ered? Is this a re­turn to the pro­tec­tion of elec­toral fraud of 1973, when Cari­com said noth­ing about the bla­tant rig­ging of the Guyana elec­tion two weeks af­ter the birth of Cari­com? Are the Cari­com bu­reau­crats in the Sec­re­tari­at ac­count­able to mem­ber gov­ern­ments who pay their salaries ? Yes, they are.

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.