THE 1968 GENERAL ELECTION
PROLOGUE: THE PLAN IS HATCHED
Peeping Tom
Kaieteur News
March 20, 2007
“In meeting of high level government and People's National Congress (PNC) leaders [ 2 or 3 words deleted *] Forbes Burnham, Prime Minister of Guyana and leader the PNC, gave instructions to rig the election scheduled for late 1968 or early 1969 in order to permit the PNC to win a clear majority. [In the last elections, held in December 1964, the PNC won 40.5 per cent of the total vote; the United Force (UF) won 12.4 per cent; and the Communist-led People's Progressive Party (PPP) made up principally of East Indians, won 45.8 per cent.]
Burnham said that the registration of East Indians, who traditionally vote for the People's Progressive Party (PPP) should be strictly limited in order to keep their number of eligible voters as low as possible. He also gave instructions... to increase the size of the PNC electorate by registering some PNC adherents who are between the age of 17 and 20 years of age, although the minimum age for voting is 21 years of age. He said he plans to have written into the electoral law a provision for increasing the use of proxy votes.
b. Through these means and by campaigning diligently, Burnham said he hopes the PNC will receive approximately half of the total vote cast in Guyana . In order to provide the winning margin for the PNC, he has arranged for Guyanese who reside overseas to vote in the Guyanese elections. He believes that there are sufficient PNC adherents overseas to give the PNC a clear majority. If it appears that the overseas registration is not sufficient to provide this majority, Burnham said he has instructed his campaign organizers overseas to provide enough false registrations to give the PNC the desired majority. [The PNC is conducting registration of overseas voters principally in the Caribbean, the United Kingdom , Canada , and the United States .]
2. The above information further clarifies Burnham's intentions regarding the forthcoming elections in Guyana . In April 1968 Burnham sated that he will not form a government if he has to continue to depend on his coalition partner, Peter d'Aguiar, leader of the United Force (UF), after the elections. In order to avoid having to depend on d'Aguiar, Burnham said that he will rig the elections in such a way that the PNC will win a clear majority. After winning a majority, he said, he would welcome a coalition with the UF, because be would not have to depend an the UF to maintain the government.”
(Extracts from Memo by Thomas H. Karamessines, Deputy Director for Plans to, Walt Rostow, Special Assistant to President of the United States of America, Linden Johnson, 12th June 1968)
CHAPTER 1: THE CAMPAIGN
"For the next election, it is either going to be Burnham or Jagan. So help me God, I shall never again lead the People's National Congress into a coalition Government."
(Forbes Burnham in the run up to the 1968 election)
CHAPER 2: THE VANISHING VOTES
“The rigging of the election was thoroughly exposed by the Granada Television Company (UK) in its two ‘World in Action' films…The first film ‘The trail of the Vanishing Votes' shown on December 9, 1968 disclosed that most of the UK voters lists were fakes. It found only 117 genuine names in a sample of 551 registered in London and only 19 in another sample of 346 registered in Manchester … So devastating was the effect that the Guyana High Commission in London claimed that Granada TV was mischievous. And the publisher and editor of the Guyana Evening Post were charged with public mischief for publishing as Associated Press dispatch which reported that ‘two horses were grazing where a Lily and Olga Barton should have been. Where Gladys Porter should live, there had been a railway since 1874'…”
(Cheddi Jagan, The West On Trial)
CHAPTER 3: THE VICTORY SPEECH
“Comrades and Friends, tonight as I stand before you I am deeply grateful for the way in which you by your votes have responded to the call of the PNC for a clear majority in the election just past… The result of the poll has shown that contrary to expectations of the bigots and shortsighted, we have crossed racial frontiers in a significant manner. We have breached the PPP stronghold in the Corentyne and elsewhere… The support which we have received from all races and classes in Guyana compels recognition that, whatever label was put on us before, we are now recognized as the truly nationalist party which we have always claimed to be, and can speak for, and are responsible to, all the people of Guyana.”
(Forbes Burnham, Independence Square 22 December, 1968)
EPILOGUE
“To call it an election is to give it a name it does not deserve; it was a seizure of power by fraud, not election.”
(Peter D'Aguiar at the conclusion of the 1968 general election)