Thank God for the Americans. Well, some of them, some of the time. There’s the Carter Center coming out with the surprising -a preliminary report on the drawing-ever-closer, elections. The pre-election report from the Carter Center says so much of what Guyanese have been saying. When SN says it, it’s called a dog. When KN reports it, it’s kicked like a crapo. When the few civil society citizens speak to express their alarm, their reward is a bucket of you-know-what. Now that the Carter Center spoke from the facts on the ground and before these exciting elections that are also numbing, what will the PPP Government of Nandall and Hamilton and Jagdeo and whoever else say now?
Campaign financing is a bad mother said the Carter Center folks, not I. The illustrious EU had something to say about that same troubling issue five years ago, reminded the government and Guyanese of it three years later, and there is Guyana and the PPP of Nandlall and Jagdeo in 2025. Promising everything under the sun, but nothing about putting a legal aroma on top of political money. If I am collecting lavishly, there’s no way that I want to put any damn legal, civil, or ethical framework around that honeybunch. And spoil the fun, no way baby. Before moving on, the EU needs to take a page out of the Carter Center textbook. Do not wait until after the elections to deliver a postmortem on the last days of that body [elections], and all that plagued it. Report now, Mr. EU. Give Guyanese, including the PPP top dogs, a long glimpse of realities in the elections’ trenches. Recall the forlorn fate of the 2020 EU report three years later: 26 recommendations, 8 priority ones, 2 fully addressed, the rest languishing in some ICU ward, with neither nurse nor nincompoop around to provide relief. Among the unaddressed, likely discarded, was the dirty issue of campaign financing.
Another dirty issue raised by the EU in 2020 involved State media. The Carter Center showed it was in the job, up to the task. State media is misused as the PPP attack dog to chase away conscientious Guyanese, to instill fear in Guyanese searching for that bone called fair play and another named fair field aka democracy. The EU said it, the Carter Center now repeats it. When SN and KN report about the constructive withholding of State ads, i.e., weaponizing it through payments in dribs and drabs, while their ad receivables increase, the PPP retorts that that is the work of sappers and subversives. In a more down-to-earth phase: anti-PPP. Well, I would like to hear from the likes of AG Nandlall and VP Jagdeo, whether the Carter Center pre-elections report is anti-PPP or pro-truth, pro facts and circumstances, as they are. After all, it was the same ruling party and those governors named who could barely contain and conceal their excitements. The international elections observers are coming; the international observers are here.
It seems to be, as based on the work of the people out of Georgia, that they are not just here, but everywhere. And what they hear everywhere: WIN! WIN! WIN! Dr. Jagdeo saw and heard that so much that he got sick, can no longer take care of himself, keep his emotions in check. He needs a doctor, other than himself; maybe, a head doctor. He hears voices speaking an unuttered acronym. WIN! He sees spirits crawling out of every nook and cranny. WIN! WIN! Apparently, the Carter people neither liked nor had much use for what they saw and heard in their travels. PPP originated abuse. PPP orchestrated strictures. PPP heavy-handedness, unevenness, and raucousness. All seemingly so, and though without owner, by American thinking there is only one owner. It is not the PNC. Nor is it Maduro. I think I shall closeout here, and leave abuse of State assets and the rest to others. Here’s my parting note.
Now that the Carter Center has pronounced on the condition of the elections’ territory and weather, and before the elections, I have arrived at a bad place. It’s the worst of all for all Guyana: an impregnable, unmoving and insoluble dead end. Given this limited edition report from the Carter Center, there are two points to place in the middle of the table and in full public view. First, there is no way that the Guyana elections of 2025 can be said to be free and fair, however both are defined individually or jointly. Second, when the runup to the September 1st elections is so boobytrapped by the PPP, so scorched earth by the PPP to the detriment of the PNC, the AFC, and WIN, then democracy is either imaginary, or the PPP blew it to pieces.
