A political system fostered by a Constitution that was always made for the dictator du jour has had its weakness lured into captivity in a soft- corruption version of technical assistance.
The imminent danger is that this service has targeted Guyana’s electoral system- the nerve center of the country– to be the benefactor of its “strengthening” and this should cause every patriotic politician to inform constituents of the perils of this development.
First, undress the claims that the International Republican Institute is a benign nongovernmental organization, a civil society entity, so imbued with benevolence that it just wants to show Guyana how to engineer its electoral process, right when Constitution reform is on the table.
Not so, when politics invariably takes a hard right turn when it helps and Grenada style invasions garnish reporting like “Institute for International Affairs, which is linked to the Republican Party, has acknowledged providing $20,000 to the Grenada Civic Awareness Organization.”
The International Republican Institute has heinous election assistance records in failed states like Afghanistan and Burma, with defeated attempts to unseat heads of state in Venezuela.
And with kindred agencies like US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), IRI has been fingered as part of the ‘assistance’ team that has wrecked the social fabric of Honduras– to name one– leaving a trail of social division, economic disadvantage and ethnic cleavage that runs contrary and counterproductively to nation building.
The whole concept of this IRI was birthed on American Conservative principles, as Ronald Reagan’s countermeasure to “the appeal of Marxist ideologies”.
So, it takes little imagination to foresee the shape of any help this Reagan flavored anti-Marxist pro conservative election repairer will offer Guyana.
No surprise, therefore, that its local curators in the form of the US Embassy and Lady Lynch, the fierce fighter for democracy, have sat mum on Team Jagdeo locking the Opposition, a constitutional arm of Government, out of Parliament and turn a blind eye ,s the same Team refuses to convene a National Assembly session, as is a matter of course when governments are not authoritarian.
How the resident champions of democracy, the US Diplomatic team, could have no comment, as an administration that it calls legitimate refuses to govern as an impartial and pro-democracy keeper of the people, should cause us concern, since this attitude frowns and fiercely on the inclusivity their voter repair is intended to preserve.
Maybe we ought to be paying more attention to the watch phrase “in accordance with regional and international standards”.
The Opposition needs to confirm what those standards are and how counter to our constitutionally guaranteed democratic freedoms they will potentially run…
Stop acting like this IRI just happened to be in the neighborhood and decided to pay Guyana a visit.
A look at the countries they have ‘assisted’ will confirm that they show up when a country is most vulnerable…sometimes after surreptitiously machinating that weakness.
We can neither overstate nor overlook how the prospect of an imploding nation appeals to the appetite of predators in search of global power…
…not when this Government of personnel, once chastised by America for constitution manipulation ,voter fraud and intimidation, is now its choice for an electoral reform program that has input singularly from those who ran shady elections.
Are we paying attention?
The strengthening of GECOM may be a necessary but not sufficient condition to guarantee electoral participation.
And America, having been a wary observer of Guyana’s elections since its pre-independence, the presence of Janet Jagan and the potential for her communist ideology to have caused some Russia fusion via Cuba, knows that racial division is in the country’s political DNA.
Their devotion, to our electoral system at this point of national instability must be combined with the arrival of Lady Lynch as Ambassador plenipotentiary, her PPP team -up within 30 days of her arrival to Guyana and her overt commentary in national politics, in favor of that Party.
Add to that, the absence of the usual threat to “review financial and other aid” as murders go unsolved, the governing party ignores the opposition …which then goes to the US Ambassador to see if the democracy she champions is not of the same fabric that Jagdeo rips, then rails against those who call out his offensively cantankerous character.
Seriously.
It’s not enough for Jagdeo to offhandedly declare that the Opposition has no standing to ask for the National Assembly to convene, when not doing so is an obstruction to governing in a democracy.
The electorate needs better governance than a petulant politician always fighting the last war, never facing the future, too pickled in personal vengeance to constructively contemplate how to defend against the one that’s coming next.
We know that he’s an inveterate dissembler.
His record as a leader steeped in activity that does not align with leadership is documented by the very people helping him to ‘fix’ the electoral system they have suggested he repeatedly molested(para 6-7) and for decades.
These are established facts.
What we shouldn’t allow to obscure that is this attempt by this foreign government to tell us differently, through offering to reframe our democracy because they were ‘observers’ in an election in which they engaged in overt partiality….
even if the Madam flashed her diplomatic toe point as she rubbed shoulders with members of Guyana’s Hall of Infamy.
The arsenal unleashed in favor of calling the election for Team Jagdeo was a full scale assault on Guyana’s sovereignty, celebrated only by those who may be benefitting and in the short run from all the stops that Pompeo and his now ejected government had pulled out to install an Administration favored by those who were puppeteering Trump.
All that can’t be divorced from the oil deal that fired Rex Tillerson had brokered for his Exxon – his retirement parachute.
Neither can Pompeo’s massaging of Brazil and Columbia to excommunicate Maduro as he made nice to Guyana.
Nor can all that be not be wrapped up in the GT based plenipotentiary Madam’s jaunts with a Tamesh Jagmohan, reputed drug lord and high-dollar donor to the PPP, notoriously on a US watch list.
I mean, if we know she has to know.
These things cannot be taken lightly, not when we have the lessons of Honduras in 1982, when Conservative Negroponte was appointed its Ambassador by Reagan because the neighboring Nicaragua Sandinista’s had a relationship with opposition elements in Honduras and how, with the nod of Negroponte ,Honduras became the launch pad for attacks on Nicaragua…
and burial ground for innocent Hondurans who became collateral damage in the quest for US power.
Too many similarities to dismiss as coincidence…and too much at stake to ignore.
The guarding of our democracy against threats both foreign and domestic has now become the responsibility of every patriotic Guyanese, particularly those who would not sell their birthright in a conspiracy with a country they know only sees them as a means to an end…potentially an irreparably disastrous one for our country.
Invaders no longer use military might first on comparatively soft targets, when they are the aggressors.
Per records, much of what the CIA used to accomplish covertly are now the agenda of the USAID, NED, IRI…
…regime selection and election assistance that yields them the pliable, malleable, governments that they need to facilitate their agenda of regional control.
The advice here is to expose the propaganda mileage being squeezed out of this 18 month US project for the contemporary destabilizer that it is.
Like the US never ceases to shout “election interference” when Russia makes its disruptive attempt, that should be the cry from every Guyanese who will be, undoubtedly, disenfranchised by this “democracy assistance” meant to mold the politics of Guyana to Conservative satisfaction.
The fate of Guyana as a sovereign nation and a functional democracy now lies in the hands of the Opposition and us, citizens, who will not allow this obviously coopted PPP Government to sell our collective birthright in a brazen act of betrayal, if not treason.
Psychologically, this unholy merger engendered by the US, is intended to make us think their tampering is justified.
Had their tweaks been in place before the election, there would not have been the contesting of ballots that ensued.
In other words, they are saying, according to their “regional and international standards” they allowed us the democracy thing and we voted …
but just not the way we were supposed to.
This assistance, now, will eradicate any future possibility of that error.
America’s plan for our electoral machine is not just any lube job, people.
It’s the evil twin of the very election interference they condemn when their rivals do it instead of them…
retooling the PPP they once condemned as insurgent to democracy and deploying them against us, in their global grab.
Our only hope now is a functional Opposition which will place principle above power and have the courage to methodically and constructively challenge the Government now that the issue is nothing less than the preservation of our constitutional Republic.
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