GUYANA- JAILING OPPONENTS FOR LIFE

The American based Organization of American States (OAS), under the servitude of regime change Apostle, Luis Almagro, appeared too often on correspondence between Jagdeo’s Party, PPP, US Ambassador Sarah Ann Lynch and Mercury Public Affairs, LLC to be mere coincidence.

Luis, a former Pink Tide ‘Chavismo’ Leftist who blamed America for the region’s woes, changed political direction with such a hard and sudden Right swerve that he landed at the helm of the OAS.

There, he was rewarded with the princely – by Uruguayan metrics– salary of USD 8,000 per month- a sum that was said to have changed his political religion just in time to falsely claim that his longtime friend, Evo Morales, was guilty of election fraud.

It was from this pulpit of conversion that Luis, along with his CARICOM political dependents, called on David Granger to “accept the election results” which were still in dispute, like they were in Bolivia when Luis intervened citing fraud, as the results trended in favor of Evo.

His, premature claims of fraud were the tactical equivalent of ushering in America’s preferred candidate, Carlos Mesa, whose fawning conservatism promised a foe against any Left leaning.

And though the final chapter of the Evo saga is proof that there was no fraud, that Evo was truly the winner and his remigration to his home country was so celebrated that his Party won the next election cycle, the role of the OAS is what should not be overlooked.…as a point of reference here…

This OAS has cemented itself as a political actor amongst its members and is not strictly the observer it professes to be.
Not only is this proven in its interference with Bolivia, but with a reverse operation in Honduras in 2017, when Juan Hernandez, a politician of shameless self-preservation, was Left enough to win the Presidency and Right enough to always vote with America, most notably for Trump’s controversial embassy in Jerusalem.

With tactical hypocrisy, Almagro denounced the Juan Hernandez elections as fraudulent with the executive boredom of generic condemnation, ignored Hondurans calling for an Evo style exile/coup  of Hernandez, then ignored his own assertion of fraud and issued a statement declaring the “OAS would work with elected authorities” in Honduras…ergo the fraudulent Hernandez.

America does provide the lion’s share of OAS operational funding – 44% per last budget. That it gets to define the political calculus of OAS member countries, including but not limited to selecting preferred leaders, seems like power bought.

But as nationals of a country, sovereign through political independence and a governing republic, which, by form, says power belongs to the people who elect their representatives, we Guyanese must ask questions of actions that seem to be diluting our authority.

The propriety of Granger’s ‘compliance’ remains subordinate to the reams of administrative violations US State Department has memorialized over the decades of PPP administration. Maybe that explains the flash mob of low-rectitude hangers on writing open letters using Sarah Ann Lynch’s talking points, as they called for Granger to step aside, piggy backing on Almagro’s call for the same.

When the stars of political interference line up this perfectly, it’s typically “the dirty hands right up to the elbows” of political manipulators.

And, with David Granger’s lack of political valor, national courtesy and decorum of office to address the nation, his supporters, his donors on why he stepped down in the middle of a controversial vote count- even as people were in the streets showing support for his office – we are left to put the pieces together, in the interest of preserving Guyana’s unilateral right to govern by exercising law and policy in the interest of Guyanese, primarily.

America’s State Department has a voluminous and itemized account of the PPP’s failure, more recently that of Jagdeo- from anemic economic growth, through budgetary mismanagement, government sponsored racial division, syndicated murder…even labelling him thug.

It is his proximity to trafficking in cocaine, weapons, persons, along with wide scale money laundering, that gave rise to mandatory Financial Action Task Force, FATF and Caribbean Action Task Force, CFATF compliance programs for Guyana to remain in the global community.

So it’s  more than curious that Ambassador Lynch now dresses him up as a champion of democracy and he globe trots as the Vice President, which is Constitutionally an  ornamental role but one in which this Jagdeo gets to push policy…in an apparent 4^th term as President.

Clearly, he’s more operative than the Prime Minister Mark Philips, whose Constitutional role is more executive than Jagdeo’s.

But then Mark’s selection was ornamental- only for that gloss of inclusivity and not functionality.

We’ve reviewed all this to discuss a particularly troubling headline recently ran in Demerara Waves “Chief Elections Officer Faces Life Imprisonment ….” an article we read and were summarily disgusted.

Jailing political opponents for life indicate an absence of democratic credentials and it’s even more revolting when it comes from an Administration that was endorsed by an American Ambassador which labeled it ‘Champions of Democracy’.

Having a law, at all, that imprisons an elections officer for life and not one that imprisons a President or a Minister that murdered from a Ministry of Home Affairs, smacks of ‘law for me and not for thee’…the chant of authoritarians everywhere.

Using the democracy of elections to go after opponents is not democracy at all but a dictatorship that fear-mongers by threatening personal freedoms because it can – and for no other reason.

Guyana is not a nation immune from political violence, rooted largely in racial division. Both Ambassador Sarah Ann Lynch and OAS’ regime change agent, Almagaro know this. It would have been part of specific preparation for their posts.

To contain political conflict of this kind, they should work real hard to maintain the legitimacy of the democratic process by advising their handpicked Administration against threatening the lives of political opponents with incarceration.

And it would be in the best interest of all involved for Gail Texiera and her Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Government to be instructed on the wisdom of retracting that threat…

See, hypocrisy has a cost.

And, as long as Gail’s threat of jailing for life is allowed to stand with a resident diplomatic community that trades in Western democracy, advocates for human rights and promotes the combination of the two as the corner stone of peace, security and overall global order, as it heals domestic fissures, it will expose the hypocrisy behind their mission of ‘advancing democracy’.

With US Ambassador Sarah Ann Lynch’s lack of that diplomatic virtue, integrity, Gail and her government may be comfortable running right up to the guardrails of the democracy she peddles.

And why not, when she comes across like the on screen ‘Dishonest Diplomat’, except that she’s not hiding under her desk waiting to be rescued …just yet.

Maybe a better analogy would be that Pun she didn’t think we learned, because she thinks we’re so unschooled:

“An ambassador is an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.”

And this, we’ll tie to her Senate audition for the job, when she hit all the right notes and pledged to be the best little Ambassador America could have.

As we said, hypocrisy has a cost and the last thing she should want is for an Administration they’ve previously documented as ill-fitting to expose their mission of Democracy as some other political excursion.

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