Dear Editor,
A team from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) came, helped, and observed Guyana’s 2025 elections. Many thanks. The UNDP has now shared its conclusions with the focus being mainly on GECOM. Systems in place, systems modernised, systems delivering. The GECOM machinery worked well, said the UNDP. Sorry, no thanks.
The human systems guiding GECOM forward can’t agree on most things of substance, but GECOM’s nonhuman systems performed well. The people that were clamoring for a biometrics system will disagree. Likewise. those that were pushing for house-to-house registration. All this modernization, yet these gaps, insoluble realities. What was it that the UNDP chose to see? Candidly, what the UNDP team saw, few others saw. They saw elections as that day unfolded around the polling stations. Peaceful and calm. Guyanese saw what took place before in villages and the hinterland, while the UNDP focused on the machinery of GECOM. The former was where the real Guyana elections were.
The UNDP team were guests, due all courtesies. No unpleasantness. Due to the source of its funding for the Guyana exercise, the UNDP steeled itself and steered itself to bury its neck into the workings of GECOM, and resurfaced with an oyster. Guyana’s premier elections institution is a marvel of progress. It takes considerable grooming of the mind to get there. A lot of turning away and pretending not to see what was begging to be seen, assessed, reported in the real elections’ world. Most of the other international groups kept their eyes on what makes elections fair and credible, and the absence of what that makes them unreportable. Meaning, better circled around, left untouched.
The UNDP should know, but may not. GECOM enjoys one of the worst reputations in Guyana; probably the worst. The systems may speak for themselves, but the same can’t be said for the people around them. Or, over them. Even the GRA, the tax champs, which is not having one of its better years, flies at a higher altitude than GECOM. The competition for poorness of practice is between the Guyana Police Force, and the Guyana Elections Commission. The deciding coin toss is still up in the air. Spinning sideways. One of my insistent positions is that there can be the best systems, best manuals, best training programs in the world, and they will all be reduced to naught if the best oversight, best visions, and best practices are more imagined than tangible.
The 2025 elections are over, the results finalized, with Guyanese moving on, dealing with the challenges of their times. But that doesn’t mean that they are in the same comfortable and satisfied frame of mind as the UNDP. An historical precedent of awful poignancy may be helpful. In the years of Jim Crow and sharecropping in the U.S., the poor and powerless sharecroppers knew that they were being held hostage, taken advantage of, but that it was best that they move on. Those who didn’t possess the skills to know, possessed the instincts to sense that they were the victims of swindles, hustles. In recalling that, and thinking of the UNDP report, much luster was lost by that group, in the light of what was put before the world.
I go beyond the UNDP, and be bold enough to say the unsayable. Foreigners issue full-toothed recognition. Colleges and varied groups line up to honor with doctorates and embraces. Locally, religious men abandon their gods, and create new ones from scratch out of Guyana’s mud. Why? What’s the determining factor, the driving force? Oh, and the compelling ambition, vision? Oil makes many things possible. Oil opportunities must be carved out and wrested. Guyanese have seen and heard the quid pro quos in the making.
A hand claps supportively; the other hand is opened, extended, to welcome. From politicians to parsons to provosts at universities, there is kneeling in the face of the rich Guyana wave. Who the hell would care about colored people in perennial battles over unfixable elections? Who would invest millions to study elections in Guyana, with the system prioritized, and would be so neutral, so unselfish, as not to be thinking of a return on that investment, that show of caring friendship? To repeat, I think that the UNDP disconnected itself from Guyana’s reality. Then did some damage to the credibility of observer missions. And last, the UNDP embarrassed itself with what it cooked, then served to Guyanese. Somehow, the UNDP saved itself by not saying that it was the best Guyana elections ever.
Yours truly,
GHK Lall
