By Steven Vickerie.
The Carter Center’s pre-election findings, released on August 19 ahead of Guyana’s September 1 polls, sounded alarms that cannot be brushed aside. The report cited the ruling party’s use of state resources, skewed media coverage, intimidation of public-sector workers, and unequal access to campaign approvals. It also warned that local banks, wary of U.S. sanctions, have restricted campaign financing. Only four of the six contesting parties signed the Ethnic Relations Commission’s code of conduct, raising doubts about how seriously some actors take the call for fair play. This is not routine election monitoring. It is a stark warning. These conditions stretch democratic trust to the breaking point, distort genuine competition, and risk disenfranchising citizens in a society already fraught with ethnic tension.
The government’s response was anything but humble. General Secretary Bharrat Jagdeo seized on one line in the report, that there was no evidence of a bloated voters’ list, and declared it vindication. At the same time, he accused the observers of overlooking “critical components” such as vote-buying allegations. In reality, Jagdeo embraced the one point that favored his party while dismissing the report’s far more troubling findings. It was a defensive maneuver, an effort to blunt criticism rather than address serious charges of media bias, intimidation, and resource abuse. The result was less reassurance and more evasion.
And here lies the danger. When independent observers issue warnings of this magnitude, brushing them aside is not strength, it is a gamble with the country’s democratic credibility. The Carter Center’s findings are not just another report to be filed away. They are a blaring alarm, signaling to both Guyanese citizens and the international community that the conditions for a genuinely free and fair election are compromised. When state machinery tilts the playing field, when campaign funds are strangled, when some parties cannot freely access venues, the entire exercise risks becoming a hollow charade.
This is bigger than political posturing. In a country where politics is already filtered through the lens of ethnicity, the impartial presence of observers is one of the few safeguards preventing elections from descending into mistrust and turmoil. Their word carries weight. And when that word signals trouble, it should jolt every responsible actor into action. To cherry-pick the favorable parts while discarding the rest is to undermine not only the observers but also the very voters whose voices these elections are meant to empower.
The truth is plain: the Carter Center has exposed cracks in Guyana’s democratic foundation. The ruling party’s response has been to patch one corner while ignoring the widening fissures. But this election is more than another political contest. It is a test of Guyana’s democratic maturity, a test of whether the system can produce an outcome that citizens and the world can trust. The stakes are nothing less than national credibility. And with the clock ticking down to Election Day, Guyana faces an urgent choice: dismiss the Carter Center’s findings as inconvenient noise, or treat them as the alarm bell they are; and act before it is too late.
