General and Regional Elections since 1992 have been influenced by the Gokul syndrome – that is, a series of actions aimed at replacing factual, with false, election results by administrative action or arithmetical miscalculation in favour a particular political party. The syndrome erred, unmistakably and invariably, in favour of the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C)which had become desperate after its vote tally continued to slide from 220, 667 in 1997; to 210,013 in 2001; 183,887 in 2006 and to 166,340 in 2011.
Former President David Granger, speaking on the programme – The Public Interest – iterated his opinion that the Gokul syndrome was, simply, a malignant PPPC disorder to defeat the expressed electoral result with a pre-determined computation in its own favour. The Syndrome was aimed at delivering to the PPPC an extra seat in 2006, and a majority in 2011. Once an official declaration had been made, correction could come only after a resort to the High Court. History has shown that this could have unpredictable and, perhaps, unfavourable, outcomes for the litigants. The near-false declaration of an electoral majority for the PPPC in 2011 followed the successful attempt in 2006.
Mr. Granger recalled GECOM’s embarrassing admission, after public exposure, that a seat in electoral district No. 10 in which the Alliance For Change gained a clear majority had been ‘mistakenly’ allocated to the PPPC in the 2006 elections. The incorrect result, however, was deliberately declared. The AFC’s recourse to the High Court failed as GECOM, through its legal counsel, successfully argued to have the petition dismissed in the High Court.
Further, he cited evidence of the syndrome in the effort to alter the formula for the allocation of seats in order to deliver the PPPC a one-seat majority in 2011. GECOM, again only after conspicuous public exposure, was forced to correct the intended false declaration. This resulted in the PPPC’s allocation of one seat less than the combined number of seats of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC) which thereby gained a historic one-seat majority in the National Assembly.
Mr. Granger lamented the fact that the Gokul syndrome has been evident in the spate of anomalies and abuses recorded in consecutive elections — 1992, 1997, 2001, 2006 and 2011. He recalled, particularly, the elections on 15 December 1997 in which GECOM precipitately declared the PPPC winner while votes were still being counted and the PPPC candidate was notoriously sworn in as President, all without the knowledge of other Election Commission members. The results of those elections, technically, were subsequently ‘vitiated’ by the Court.
Most recently, the Elections Commission declined to redress the detectable distortion in the tabulation of tallies despite being presented with a record of abuses, anomalies, discrepancies and irregularities which included ballots being cast in the names of persons who were dead or had migrated; ballots of persons without proper identification; ballots cast exceeding the number of persons on the Official List of Electors and ballots for one electoral district cast in another, among other anomalies.
The Former President warned that elections scheduled to be held in November 2025 are unlikely to be free from being infected by the Gokul syndrome in which abuses, anomalies and miscalculations could influence the outcome in favour of the PPPC. 󠄀
