A high bar, intense pressure

Aug 22, 2025 Editorial, News

Kaieteur News – The international community of elections’ observers in Guyana must be in an uncomfortable position. An old record from its prior work and a new development combine to put the entire international community in Guyana for elections’ purposes with its back to the wall. It would be interesting to watch how the observers react to the bind in which they are in. More than their own efforts and their own reputations are involved. The fate of a young, still struggling democracy in Guyana hangs in the balance.

In the long elections period of 2019-2020, Guyana’s huge band of foreign watchers and helpers were everywhere, and they usually had something of merit to say. From the perspective of not a few citizens, they got involved too deeply, and said too much at times. The then US Ambassador to Guyana, Sarah Ann Lynch was in the forefront of elections developments, a force to reckon with. As she went, so did the rest of the international community, almost always speaking with one voice. A clean elections process, and a credible result, were at the top of the agenda and, for the finishing touch, democracy must prevail. We at this paper think that those energies and actions represented a strong standard, set a high bar for the elections to follow, beginning with the now pending elections of 2025. The international elections observer community cannot now standdown from that high bar that it set five years ago.

The observers from the Carter Center came early, so they have had a clear field to absorb, to study, and to report on. In their recently released pre-elections report, the Carter Center observers, though careful and courteous, did not pull any punches. They called the current elections campaigns, as they saw them, and from their report, it is clear that they didn’t have much appreciation for what they saw. The imbalances that were previously identified are still front and center, and damaging to the parties contesting the elections, save one. The PPPC Government has not done much of anything to change the blatantly unfair situation relative to access to state media for the five other competing political parties. Whatever the consequences of such action, those contestants are working out of a hole.

The government has used its controlling hand on state assets to its own exorbitant advantage, and in an arrogant manner. What should have been discontinued has gone the other route now that oil money flows copiously. The PPP as a contesting group in the elections, now less than two weeks to go, flourishes and even flaunts how it has commandeered state resources for political campaigning objectives. The Carter Center noted that, and the assaults on the We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) political party led by the US-sanctioned Azruddin Mohamed. In a terse and telling statement, the Carter Center noted the “over-complying” by local banks, through their efforts at “de-risking” by the closure of bank accounts.

Frankly, we didn’t expect the Carter Center to go that far, to speak so pointedly on an issue that has divided Guyanese some more, and in the usual dispiriting manner. But the Carter Center did, to its credit, and with some implications for the rest of the international elections’ observer missions. Former US Ambassador Sarah Ann Lynch led the charge in 2019-20, and is applauded. Current US Ambassador to Guyana, Nicole Theriot cannot afford to shrink to the point of invisibility in 2025, because America set that high bar. The Carter Center has reported, and so should the EU Observer Mission for the general and regional elections of this year. All of the 2020 international elections observer groups that were in Guyana, and that are back, cannot now pretend at blandness or the distance of neutrality. They would be the worst of conspicuous hypocrites, of manifesting barefaced double standards, when the basics of democracy are being severely tested, often ruptured presently.

All eyes are on the international observers from the region and from more distant international shores. From CARICOM to the OAS, from the EU to the ABC countries, their vigilance and inputs are needed now and not in October. They created the standards in 2020, they must relive them in 2025.

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A high bar, intense pressure

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