By GHK Lall- The people from the Carter Center came to Guyana to observe the 2025 elections at the invitation of the Bharrat Jagdeo-controlled PPP Government. The Carter Center came, observed, issued a pre-elections report. It is not the first time that it has done so here, I now understand. To put it mildly, it was a scathing report, one that exposed the PPP Government as a pretender about democracy.
All doubts about whether PPP strongman is a jester where fair and balanced elections are concerned vanished in an instant. He now rails at the Carter Center: it is a political organization. From a trusted friend and ally in the fight for free and fair elections in Guyana since 1991-92 (and to the PPP’s advantage), the Carter Center is now a ‘political organization.’
How low can Bharrat Jagdeo go? How frazzled is he to dive that deeply? How reckless and dangerous is this-the most powerful man in the PPP Government, national leader-now that he has his back to the wall, and is stripped of all pretenses?
I think that as pointedly relevant as those three questions are, there is a still another that fits the vice president more closely. How desperate he has become, now that he doesn’t have the numbers, now that his only weapon is abuse and vitriol?
There is a history to this outburst, one in a long string, from the chief PPP enforcer, the government’s most senior reviler. When he is challenged, when his skimpy narratives fragment, when his contortions are discovered and exposed, he loses control, gives a damn about civility or standards. The Carter Center people are guests of his government, but when they don’t follow the government’s script, then hell hath no fury like Dr. Jagdeo. He is more maddened than a bull before whom a red flag is waved.
Jagdeo has been taken to task before by civil society members and journalists, and he reacted in the only way he knew. With a battering ram spiked with nails dripping with his special brand of venom. Women journalists have been verbally assaulted for exposing the PPP Government’s weaknesses, its nakedness, and the ugliness of its corrupt nature. Myself and others have been vilified via a scabbard of poisoned arrows, because the national criminal enterprise that is the PPP Government has no stomach for truth, no tolerance for truth-seekers and truth tellers.
From who is a predator to who is a traitor to who is a stealth operator, the PPP Government and its agents have dug deep into their arsenals for weapons to conduct cold-blooded character assassinations. From my own personal experience, I can attest to Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo’s role in such attempts at character assassination to intimidate into silence. Now he has set his sights on a foreign group that was up until recently, the darling of the PPP establishment. The Carter Center is it, his new favorite whipping post, made into a scapegoat, for he and his government’s failures.
What is the Carter Center’s cardinal sin? Speaking the truth about electoral conditions in this so-called democracy in Guyana. The Carter Center is a political organization. It wasn’t when it helped the PPP to get back into government in 1992. It wasn’t when it was among those fighting tooth-and-nail to push the PPP back into power in 2020. But today when the Carter Center speaks and writes about PPP ambushes on an elections competitor that transforms the Yanks into a political organization.
When the Carter Center points to the overreaction and overkill of local banks, allies of the PPP, the foreign observers are now a sworn enemy. When the Carter Center points to the misuse of state resources and State media used unfairly, it is now persona non grata. I caution Dr. Jagdeo not to get so unhinged that he ends up on the wrong side of the Yanks. On each occasion that the PPP flexed its muscles and upset the Americans, it ended up on its head or behind. The choice is Jagdeo’s, and neither he nor his people cannot say that I gave him fair warning, early warning.
He can vent his anger more, or even expel, the Carter Center. Now that would leave the entire cohort of international elections observers in Guyana in a most difficult place. To stay or to go also, that would be the question. The US Embassy and the US Ambassador, Excellency Theriot would be on the horns of a dilemma: what the hell is this? How to shut down this outrage?
Vice President Jagdeo overstepped, lost his balance. He threatens to takedown the whole shaky PPP edifice with him. Manage oneself right, and there is no need to fight. Be about democracy’s truths and lights, and all the blights that now hang on the PPP’s head would never exist.
