OPINION: PPP using int’l community as prop, cover, passport

Last Updated on Wednesday, 13 August 2025, 19:08 by Writer

by GHK Lall

If Guyanese heard it once, they still hear it a million echoes. The international community is coming. International elections observers present. They might as well not be, for all they contribute, all the respect given. I laud the honorable vice president and still more honorable attorney general (the bar is low, admittedly) for being master manufacturers. Guyana’s export sector is safe, in the hands of these two noble sons of Guyana. The thoughtful in Guyana may inquire why the top banana is left out. When one converts himself to a fifth wheel on the 25^th coach, then the less said, the better. Carry on in farcical fashion, and dismissal follows.

The PPP Government hails the presence of the international community, that gathering golden horde of elections observers. Me, too! Welcome to Guyana. Do have a tranquil stay. But as inserted earlier, to what purpose, value? In 2020, the nice people of the EU came, saw, and contributed. A report chock-filled with 26 recommendations. The clock read June 2020. Three years thereafter, the much-heralded work of the EU lay in tatters. Two out of the 26 EU recommendations were all that the PPP Government of Jagdeo and Nandlall had time (or interest) to implement fully. One involved counting the votes cast; the other with standing with a bullhorn and shouting to the world. Tabulating and declaring, those are called. I call that the genius of nursery level advanced calculus. Still, I thank these two great Guyanese for their industry, their huge mercies, which must have drained all energy from them. I would be remiss if something isn’t mentioned: some of the other EU recommendations were on the road to get somewhere.

Fellow citizens, the charge of even greater delinquency could rage, and rightly so, if I didn’t mention that two of the eight priority recommendations of the EU weren’t touched, were all but given a kick in the bottom by the PPP Government. The always tricky, never less than stealthy, issue of campaign financing was one. The milk of human understanding flows, since even in the grand ole USA, campaign financing is such a quarrelsome, nettlesome issue. Since that is a problem for America, it must be a problem for Guyana, regardless of political party or government who says otherwise. On the bright recommendation called campaign financing, both the PPP and PNC are of one head and one voice. There is neither cup nor palm tree separating the two, which is concluded to be a start on the path to One Guyana. And on campaign financing, of all issues. There is hope for Guyana and Guyanese, trust me on this one.

The second priority EU recommendation from the stormy 2020 elections that ended up in the Haags Bosch dumpsite was and is a profound one. The transformation of PPP controlled State media into a respected public broadcaster. I seek the pardon of Rhodes Scholar Nandlall for sneaking in PPP-controlled and ‘respected’ before public broadcaster in the preceding sentence. If his comrades can go overboard with the sexual, I should have writ to deal in the cerebral. Sublime, if I may take the liberty. Equal access, fair access, consistent access to taxpayer funded media channels. For all political participants. For all civil society contributors. Me, I am just a scribbler. When the State media playing field is so blatantly tilted to favor the PPP Government, Mr. Nandlall knows better than to squawk himself hoarse and silly about “free and fair” and his usual frivolity about some strain of democracy. He has his own; the civilized world has another.

It is not a random development that Dr. Jagdeo and Prof Nandlall went on extended sickout relative to State media transformation and diversification. C’mon people! and give the PNC and AFC media time? How stupid does anyone think that the VP and AG are? Horror of horrors: imagine WIN on NCN or getting space in the Guyana Chronicle to share his positions, objections, and rebuttals. The Stalinist and North Korean worlds that are all that Jagdeo and Nandlall know and cherish would come to a catastrophic collapse. If people like me cannot get a line in State media, the PPP’s golden child, then consider the probabilities of that Guyanese that they forcibly awarded Venezuelan citizenship to, Azruddin Mohamed. Aye, yai, yai. Or, as the Brits would say: Holy Smoke. No! It’s not a papal convention. Just Guyana’s elections in action.

Now it’s time to return to the EU, OAS, US and sundry. What’s the merit of these luscious presences, if they are nothing but a UN peacekeeping force, a temporary restraining order? Recommendations kicked. Standards spat upon. Pronouncements laffed at over rum, even before their planes depart. And the int’l observer cycle is repeated in 2030. If that year dawns here.