The lie, the whisper and the hammer

Aug 08, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – In the brittle, corrupt republic of Guyana, the PPPC has always understood that a distraction is the best precursor to whittle away the rights of citizens. But today there is something more dangerous and darker taking place. The PPPC is using paranoia to inaugurate tyranny.

When Team Mohamed began to murmur about electoral ambitions, the PPPC responded not with debate, but with inquisition. It hatched a three-prong scheme that involved nothing but persecution. Here was not the clash of ideas, but the cold war of sabotage, innuendo, and institutional cowardice.

First, the lie. The government peddled a fiction that anyone in Guyana who dared transact business with Team Mohamed would be subject to American sanctions. It was a lie too brazen to be innocent, yet too calculated to be mere confusion. OFAC sanctions—the product of the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control—apply strictly to dealings with U.S. persons and U.S. entities. That is the law, written plainly, and it has never included the local shopkeeper in Corriverton or the businessman in Kitty.

And yet sections of the media, more housemaid than watchdog, parroted the government line. They joined the chorus of fear. For weeks, this column reminded the public of the obvious: that these sanctions were not extraterritorial. Then on Wednesday came the US Ambassador herself to say clearly that the OFAC sanctions apply to American jurisdiction. Nothing more, nothing less.

Second, the whisper. A new rumour surfaced one that was sinister in its implication and colonial in its arrogance. That rumour was that those who associate with Team Mohamed would lose their U.S. visas. Again, a fiction. Visa revocations are not determined by OFAC; they fall under the purview of immigration authorities, governed by a different set of rules, standards, and evidence. But in Guyana, where the passport stamp of a foreign embassy often replaces the dignity of citizenship, this tactic was effective. It sowed doubt. It made people hesitate.

And then, the hammer. The government, unsatisfied with whispers and lies, began to apply pressure where it hurts: in the banks. Suddenly some account holders—ordinary citizens who had done nothing more than appear on a list of candidates for the WIN party—began to find their accounts shuttered, closed without explanation or due process. The banks, desperate to protect their precious correspondent relationships, became agents of political intimidation.

The facts are clear, even if the banks pretend it is not. Under OFAC guidelines, being a candidate or supporter of a political party led by a sanctioned individual does not render you a sanctioned party. There is no legal basis for a blanket attack on political association. There is, however, a constitutional right to freedom of association—a right the banks have trampled in their rush to comply with the government’s political agenda. It is cowardice, and it is complicity.

The government, for its part, has shifted from lies to lunacy. It now claims that the mere election of AZMO, the leader of WIN, would present a security risk to the Republic. It is a hysterical fiction that is remarkable only for the gall with which it is delivered. This is the same government that once harboured Ronald Gajraj, a man so odious in the eyes of the United States that Washington announced it could be uncomfortable with him as Minister of Home Affairs. Gajraj, let us not forget, was cleared by a Commission of Inquiry. The U.S., ever pragmatic, simply ignored the exoneration and stated its position. He was eventually shipped off to India as High Commissioner, a tidy way to make a security risk disappear.

So why should AZMO be deemed a national security risk? Because he is a political threat, and in Guyana that is the most unforgivable sin of all. What the PPP fears is not crime. What it fears is competition. We are witnessing a regime that cannot countenance challenge. A party so obsessed with control it will manipulate law, lie through its mouthpieces, and weaponize the financial system to annihilate any who dare contest its divine right to rule. This is not governance. This is repression. And like all authoritarian blueprints, it begins with the vilification of opponents, the silencing of allies, and the suppression of alternatives. Guyana is not at the precipice. It is already sliding down the slope. It is a country that is oil-rich, but ethically bankrupt; nominally democratic, but functionally autocratic. The people must now decide whether they are citizens or subjects.

(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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• corrupt, lie, Peeping Tom, PPPC

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