THE justifiable fear of the PPP/C that it would not be treated fairly by the electoral machinery, should be allayed somewhat by former US President Jimmy Carter’s decision to lead an observer team for this country’s elections next month, and may provide some level of comfort to the governing partnership and its supporters.After decades of the PNC propagating itself in Government through utilisation of every stratagem to rig elections – a practice party stalwarts concede is still a feature of their own internal electoral mechanisms, Jimmy Carter’s intervention finally resolved the impasse, facilitating (relatively) free-and-fair elections on 5th October 1992. This precipitated the ruling party’s dynamic transformation of this country from being graphed as below Haiti on the development scale to the status of a middle-income developing country with stable macro-economic fundamentals and a record of continuous economic growth patterns for approximately a decade.

The socio-economic progress that Guyana has experienced is therefore directly attributable to Jimmy Carter and his Carter Centre. PPP/C supporters see Jimmy Carter as Guyana’s best-loved friend and saviour.

Former US President Jimmy Carter
Granted, Dr. Cheddi Jagan had led a heroic and indomitable struggle for decades to rid Guyana of all its oppressors. At varying times he was joined by other freedom fighters, such as the late Dr. Walter Rodney, but they were taken out, or kept out of the equation – some by assassination, like the late Dr. Rodney, some by threats, such as the labour leader who was kidnapped and held aloft over the Demerara River, dangling from a helicopter by GDF ranks, until he promised to stop agitating the labour force to fight for their rights, among others.

So it was likely that, without President Carter’s intervention and facilitation there would never have been a free-and-fair election in Guyana and the PNC would have continued to perpetuate itself indefinitely in Government, until Guyana would have completely self-destructed under an oppressive, destructive regime.

We are a developing country – emerging from a history of a plethora of destructive elemental forces that devastated our nation, even to the point where even the more optimistic thought that we would never emerge from the quagmire in which we had been immersed for decades – to the point where even the more altruistic funding agencies had practically written us off as almost beyond redemption.

Until Jimmy Carter decided, in the interest of justice, and in light of the contention of Guyana’s iconic leader, Dr. Cheddi Jagan, that the PPP had been “cheated, not defeated” for decades during general elections in Guyana, that the Carter Centre should use its phenomenal power to force the Hoyte administration, which is recorded to have been responsible for the worst election rigging in the history of Guyana during general elections of 1985, as well as the Draconian Economic Recovery Programme (ERP) that he had imposed on the Guyanese people, to concede to having relatively “free and fair” general elections in our country after decades of PNC rule.

Dr. Jagan was vindicated and the reconfigured PPP, with its civic component, undertook the gargantuan task of trying to restore some order out of the critical and chaotic national landscape then prevailing – in every area.

However, the troubling signs that the joint Opposition would use every trick in their unparalleled repertoire, including violence – listen to their calls on their public forums for ‘revolution’, to leverage themselves into the primary administrative office in the land, is frightening in its implications.

They have tasted power and they flexed their muscles, albeit at a great cost to the nation as they wielded their miniscule joint parliamentary one-seat majority like a sword of Damocles over the Guyanese people, whom they alluded to as ‘collateral damage’ in their hunger for power

It is therefore quite re-assuring that President Jimmy Carter has decided that he will ensure his efforts to democratise this nation in 1992 do not go in vain and that elections of 2015 would be free, fair and transparent.