Keep your claws out of our affairs!

Jul 24, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – When it comes to the United States, self-interest is often packaged as principle. And when that interest involves the plundering of our resources, morality flows not from conviction but from calculation.

It was only a matter of time before Guyana’s electoral affairs became the subject of another imperial whisper from the empire. The recent insinuation—subtle to the trained ear, yet thunderous in its presumption—that the United States would “have difficulties” with a certain individual’s elevation to Guyana’s National Assembly, is the latest echo of a long, dishonorable tradition.

The US makes no bone about its right to dictate to those it says are in its backyard. It has long held firmly to the belief that the affairs of sovereign nations are open to US meddling. Haiti is today in a mess because of that tradition.

But if we were to speak the truth, we would admit that the United States has no moral authority to tell Guyana who should run for public office. It has no legal mandate to interfere in the decisions of a free electorate. And it certainly has no place in speaking about the difficulties it will have if certain democratic choices which the Guyanese people may make come 1^st September.

That the US has a penchant for meddling in the internal affairs of countries should come as no surprise. What should be surprising is that such meddling is tolerated, or worse, internalized as legitimate.

The US has far from an unblemished record when it comes to sanctioned individuals running for office. Narendra Modi was once denied a visa to the United States for his alleged complicity in sectarian violence. But once elected Prime Minister of India, Modi was quickly embraced by the US. He now walks the halls of Washington with the soft hush of red carpet beneath his feet. No questions asked. No moral concerns whispered in diplomatic corridors.

Benoni Urey of Liberia—a man once listed on the U.S. Treasury’s list of specially designated nationals for his alleged affiliations with Charles Taylor regime, was allowed, after election and appointment, to resume his public service. In 2015, the Obama administration lifted the sanctions. No scolding lectures about the sanctity of democratic norms. No State Department emissaries cautioning against his participation in governance. No special statements warning of “difficulties.”

We see, then, that principle is flexible, bent according to the angle of national interest. And in Guyana, where the extractive economy now flows with golden promises of petroleum wealth, American interest has suddenly become very rigid. The mere possibility that someone bearing the scarlet mark of an OFAC sanction might rise through the ballot or by party list to legislative office is now presented not as a matter for domestic reflection, but as a question of U.S. comfort.

But who granted the United States such veto power over the electoral sovereignty of others? Not the United Nations, whose charter enshrines self-determination. Not the Vienna Convention, which guards the sovereign equality of states. And certainly not the Guyanese people, whose long march from colonialism to universal adult suffrage did not culminate in outsourcing their choices to foreign embassies.

The U.S. representative who now raises concerns about the political uneasiness of a Guyanese citizen does so not from legal authority, but from imperial habit. A habit nurtured during the Cold War when entire Latin American governments were dissolved with a whisper from the CIA. A habit sustained by the post-9/11 doctrine that all international order must be shaped in the image of American fear. A habit, in short, of saying, “You are sovereign, but only if we approve.”

To be sure, Guyana has not helped its case. The attempted theft of the 2020 elections by the then-incumbent APNU+AFC created the opportunity for Washington’s moralistic foot to wedge itself in the door of our democracy. The hypocrisy of the riggers opened the window for American self-righteousness to climb through, waving flags of electoral sanctity that fly only when convenient. But one betrayal of democracy does not justify another.

No person—sanctioned or not—should be disqualified from seeking office by foreign decree. That is not the role of OFAC, nor the State Department, nor any external actor operating outside our constitutional order. If the people of Guyana, in their imperfect wisdom, choose to elect a controversial figure to Parliament, that is not a crime—it is democracy, with all its muddle and mischief.

The clawing hand of the United States, reaching into our ballot boxes, must be slapped away—not because we are ungrateful for past support, but because we are grown. Our independence was not a gift; it was earned. And sovereignty, once earned, must be defended not only from within but from the insinuations and intrusions of without.

If America is uncomfortable with our choices, it may avert its gaze. But it has no right to intervene, influence, or intimidate. In this election and every one that follows, the Guyanese people—not Washington—will have the final say. Let that be the end of the matter.

(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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• affairs, Guyana Elections, No moral, Peeping Tom, self-interest, USA

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