Democracy without freedom

Mar 07, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News- A democracy without freedom is a like a human body without breath. It is a like nation in name only, a hollowed-out shell where the rituals of governance persist but the essence of liberty is drained away.

This is the direction in which Guyana now tilts. The country’s governance is becoming an unsteady ship listing under the weight of assaults on the free press, state-orchestrated smear campaigns, political intransigence, and the weaponization of public institutions against dissenters.

It is not a dictatorship, not yet, but a slow, methodical suffocation of freedom—a democracy by appearance only, where the people vote but do not truly speak, where the opposition exists but does not truly function, where power is not shared but monopolized in practice.

The free press, the indispensable foundation of any functioning democracy, has found itself under siege. Weekly, the government does not merely respond to criticisms; it assails the press with venom that transcends rebuttal. To defend one’s record is democratic; to vilify journalists, to attack their credibility with the fervor of a prosecutor bent on securing a conviction in the court of public opinion, is something else entirely.

The pattern is predictable: a legitimate critique is met not with counterargument but with character assassination, an exposé is dismissed not with facts but with derision. The government’s response to press scrutiny has morphed from engagement to outright hostility, turning the media into a battlefield where reporters must either withstand the onslaught or retreat into silence.

Yet, the war on information is not waged solely through official channels. The rise of social media as a political tool has given birth to an ecosystem of influencers and operatives whose task is not to inform but to destroy.

Opponents of the government, whether members of the formal opposition or simply critical voices, are dragged through the mud with a viciousness that reveals a deeper intent. It is not mere political contestation; it is a calculated effort to delegitimize, to scandalize, to render adversaries impotent through character demolition. The objective is clear: to defang the opposition.

This brings us to the matter of political engagement—or rather, its deliberate absence. Cooperation between government and opposition is supposed to be a good thing, a grease that gives deeper meaning to the machinery of democracy. In Guyana, that machinery now runs dry. The opposition is not merely sidelined; it is summarily dismissed, as if the government alone represents the will of the people.

The government governs in an echo chamber, and the narrative of “us versus them” has become so entrenched that even the most well-intentioned proposal from the opposition is dead on arrival. It is a governance of exclusion, where democracy exists not as a mechanism for representation, but as a tool for the monopolization of power.

But of all the ways in which freedom is being eroded, the most insidious is the use of the state itself as a bludgeon against political opponents, perceived or real. It is not enough that critics be refuted, nor that they be humiliated; they must also be punished. The full weight of the state machinery is now being brought to bear on those deemed adversarial. To entertain political aspirations outside of the ruling order is to invite scrutiny, not of one’s policies but of one’s private dealings, of one’s business transactions, of one’s personal life. There is a price to be paid for standing in opposition, and the currency is harassment, intimidation, and the looming specter of state retribution.

This is not a dictatorship in the classical sense; it is not a system of outright repression, of shuttered newspapers and disappeared dissidents. But it is an erosion, a slow unraveling of the freedoms that make democracy meaningful. It is democracy without air, a suffocating charade in which elections take place but choice is constrained, in which debate exists but only within the government’s permitted boundaries, in which opposition is tolerated but rendered functionally irrelevant. It is a democracy in form, but not in spirit.

A democracy without freedom is not a democracy at all. It is a deception, a pretense, a well-rehearsed performance that masks the creeping consolidation of power. Guyana stands now at the precipice, teetering between the democracy it once was and the controlled state it threatens to become. The question is not whether democracy will remain in name, but whether it will remain in substance. For democracy is more than a system of governance—it is a way of life, an ecosystem of rights, liberties, and checks on power. And if those are allowed to wither, then what remains is but an empty husk, a land where the people vote but do not breathe, where the government reigns but does not listen, and where freedom will be remembered only in past tense.

(Democracy without freedom)

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.) 

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• a democracy, human body, public institutions, suffocation of freedom, Weaponization

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