Dear Editor,
The recent missive in your (Dec 24th) edition, proffered by pro—PPP advocate Mr. Nikhail Sankar, regarding the Commonwealth Observer Group (COG) report, is a “masterclass in political gaslighting.” The writer accuses the presumptive leader of the opposition (LOO) of “cherry-picking,” his use of elections reports, yet proceeds to harvest an entire orchard of selective facts to serve a pro-government narrative. It is time to address the report in its entirety, rather than the “snippets” currently being weaponised to sanitise the 2025 general elections.
The writer’s attempt to use the COG’s praise of a “peaceful” polling day as a blanket exoneration of the entire electoral process is intellectually dishonest. While the COG did commend GECOM’s technical staff, the report simultaneously sounded an alarm that the writer chose to silence: the “undue advantage of incumbency.” The Commonwealth observers were clear—the playing field was not level. It clearly stated: “The findings of our observer group also underscore that more remains to be done to secure equity, full inclusivity and restore public confidence” The persistent challenges, which affected public confidence and equity, including uneven access to campaign resources, media bias that favoured the governing party, weak regulation of campaign finance, and ongoing partisan divides, blurring of lines between official government business (launching hospitals, roads, and bridges) and PPP/C campaign activities created a distorted environment that no amount of “professional counting” can rectify.
Furthermore, the writer’s dismissal of concerns regarding the voters’ list is a gross oversimplification. The COG report explicitly noted the “significant trust deficit” regarding the inflated official list of electors. To suggest that the report “shreds” these concerns is a lie; the report actually calls for mechanisms to enhance the “credibility and integrity” of the list for future processes.
Most egregious is the silence on the non-certification of the election results. If the process was as “diligent” and “transparent” as the writer claims, why does the cloud of non-certification continue to hang over the final declaration? Transparency is not a part-time requirement; it applies from the first ballot cast to the final legal certification.
The Guyanese public deserves the full picture, not a sanitised PPP brochure. When a report cites “media bias favoring the governing party” and “weak campaign finance regulation,” it is describing a system that is fundamentally skewed.
To the letter writer: you cannot herald the COG as the ultimate authority on “transparency” while simultaneously ignoring their specific warnings about your party’s misuse of state resources. That is not an analysis; it is a cover-up. Democracy thrives on the whole truth, and as you rightly stated “election lies are a cancer to the health of any democratic society,” yet you engaged in the very acts that you are chastising others for, resorting to the use of convenient snippets in desperation to bury the reality of a flawed process.