Election- no foreign involvement

Jul 30, 2025 Editorial, News

Kaieteur News – President Donald Trump has said that America will stay out of foreign elections. Though he has a reputation for changing his mind, leaving others guessing, this is one commitment he should keep. Guyana could emerge as one of the biggest winners, where foreign involvement is at a minimum in local elections.

This nation could find itself with an opportunity to determine what it is made of, what it truly wants, and how it intends to go about making its visions a reality. Guyana’s history is not a proud one, especially where its elections are considered. This country has always been found wanting, lacking in what it takes to look after itself. Like an individual confined to a wheelchair, that is as self-sufficient as Guyana has been. To some extent, Guyanese leaders and Guyanese themselves have always displayed a marked tendency to depend on others to help through the difficulties of elections, to hold their hands, to be proxies for them when tough decisions must be made.

The US stands as the virtual guardian of Guyana, with Guyanese only too pleased with their role as a dependent. The history of elections has been of a country and its peoples reduced to a state of near paralysis, not knowing what the next step should be. Leaders from the region have run to the rescue, and regional bodies such as CARICOM and the OAS have stood by Guyanese as they battle for democracy, for human rights, and for a better way of living.

Like a wicked genie trapped in a bottle, then released, elections have come to represent this in the ugliest ways possible. While CARICOM, the OAS, and others have lent a hand, the US has the clout, and provided the diplomatic muscle to shake Guyanese politicians from where they are stuck, set them on a different path. Without the powerful presence of the US in Guyana’s elections, this country would have been in a much different state, with shambles not too much of an exaggeration. It must be said, too, that the US also has a shabby history of manipulating Guyana’s elections and Guyana’s politicians to suit its own priorities, interests, objectives.

After 59 years of Independence, it is disgraceful that Guyana is still stuck in almost the same place as the elections of decades ago. Rigging made its appearance in local elections, as early as in the 1960s, became the standard in the next couple of decades after, and has never really disappeared off the local elections’ scene at all. In the elections of 2020, some of the worst rigging of all times was attempted in the crudest manner. Personnel from the US were everywhere in Georgetown in efforts to get to the bottom of contradictory developments, claims and counterclaims, and amid a sea of raw political passions. Personnel at the highest levels in the US warned Guyanese leaders from Washington, actually traveled down to here, to insist that fairness, and nothing but fairness, must prevail at all times. If the US were not deeply involved in Guyana’s 2020 elections, then there is no knowing, not even with the hindsight of five years later, where Guyana and its peoples would have gone from the chaos of those days.

Now President Trump has announced that the US will be standing to the side in foreign elections, taking a less visible role. Is this country ready to be responsible for its own affairs, with national elections standing at the top of the list? Can this country stand on its own, and then march resolutely forward to be the master of its destiny? Guyanese have never trusted each other enough to give themselves a chance at finding out the answer to those existential questions. Donald Trump has opened a new door for Guyana, if he sticks to his word. With so much going on here, and with so much of corporate America now present here, it strains the mind to believe that the White House and Washington will stand unconcernedly at the side, and allow the seasonal weakness and failures of elections to drive Guyana into disarray. Donald Trump likes being a broker, extracting his fee, so Guyana represents good business for him.

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Editorial, Election, Foreign involvement, Guyanese leaders

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