Today, the disciplined services are exercising one of their most sacred duties, casting their ballots ahead of the general public. Yet President Irfaan Ali appeared at the Guyana Police Force Officers’ Mess Annexe while senior officers and headquarters staff were voting. His decision to stand in the very space where ranks were lining up to cast their ballots is alarming, troubling, and while not illegal wholly inappropriate.
The Representation of the People Act, Section 78, is clear. No one within two hundred yards of a polling location is permitted to annoy, molest, interfere with, or attempt to find out the vote of an elector. The purpose of this section is to guarantee that electors are free from undue influence. The President’s presence undermines that guarantee.
The Guyana Constitution also speaks forcefully to this principle. Article 1 declares Guyana to be a democratic state founded on sovereignty of the people. Article 9 guarantees that sovereignty belongs to the people, who exercise it through free and fair elections. Article 159 provides that every citizen has the right to vote, while Article 162(1)(b) mandates the Elections Commission to exercise its functions independently and free from control or influence by any person or authority.
How then do we reconcile these guarantees with the Commander-in-Chief showing up at a polling station where members of the armed forces are voting? The very Constitution he swore to uphold makes it plain; the franchise belongs to the people, and GECOM alone is empowered to supervise elections. The President has no role at the ballot box except to cast his own vote.
There is no greater display of desperation than the leader of an administration; which has refused to raise salaries, which has undermined unions, left soldiers on the boarder without proper rations, compromised the process of justice by exerting excessive influence over the leaders of the joint services, covered up a deadly helicopter crash which killed top army staff and generally displayed contempt for the mandated independence of the armed forces, showing up at the polls, to walk among voting police officers, to seek to influence their votes.
Anonymous insiders in the security sector were blunt. “This reeks of intimidation,” one retired official said. “What message do you think the presence of the President sends to young officers voting under his command?” A former elections officer went further; “It is a gross breach of democratic etiquette. Even if technically not unlawful, it violates the spirit of neutrality that is supposed to govern elections.”
Diplomatic observers described the optics as “deeply troubling.” They noted that the President’s mere presence within the orbit of a polling place exerts influence, intended or not, over the officers casting their ballots.
The Constitution gives citizens the right to vote in secret, free from intimidation, and it gives GECOM the sole authority to oversee that process. When the President places himself at the polling station, he blurs the line between political power and electoral independence.
So again, we ask; what was his purpose there? If it was not to intimidate or influence, what other justification can possibly exist?
A President who truly respected the Constitution would have stayed far away. His choice speaks volumes, and none of it in defense of democracy.
