Dear Editor,
Democracy means we the people are part of an informed electorate, have protected rights, liberty, and equality. When a power systematically undermines each of these, the issue is whether democracy has ceased to function. I argue that the evidence from Guyana’s current political landscape compels precisely this conclusion. Democracy isn’t dying, it’s being killed. It isn’t an abstraction. Democracy is a covenant, solemn, negotiable promise that we are sovereign, that truth is protected, rights are inviolable, and no one stands above law. When a government systematically dismantles each of these, one by one, with deliberate precision, we must stop using polite language. We must name what is happening. Guyana’s democracy isn’t malfunctioning. It’s being strangled. Is there a shutting out of the truth? Do they know exactly what they’re doing?
A democracy only works when the people actually know what’s going on. If citizens are kept in the dark, democracy is just a word — like dressing up a dead body and pretending it’s alive. Guyana’s government isn’t accidentally keeping people uninformed — it’s doing it on purpose. We’ve seen where this road leads. In 1970, it got so bad that over 100,000 people fled for their lives. Cuba went through the same thing in 1959, except even more people were affected.
Now, trained, legitimate journalists — the people whose job it is to keep the public informed — are being physically blocked from entering Parliament. Not some private meeting. Parliament. The very place that only exists because ordinary people gave it power in the first place. This isn’t a mistake or a mix-up. It’s the government basically saying: we don’t respect the public, and we don’t want you to know what we’re doing. Not only that, its civil liability: restraint of trade.
And while independent reporters are locked out, state-controlled propagandists are waved through. They are given access, amplification, and the blessing of power — not to inform, but to manipulate. Misinformation is not a side effect of this government’s media strategy. It is the strategy. When those who control government also control the narrative, elections don’t represent our will, but the will of whoever controls the information. That isn’t democracy but theater — and the Guyanese people deserve far better than a performance. The law has become a weapon aimed at you. In a functioning democracy, the law is a shield but here it has been sharpened into a sword, wielded against ordinary citizens while the powerful walk untouched.
Certain individuals, well-connected, politically protected, accumulate staggering, inexplicable wealth in plain sight, with zero scrutiny and zero accountability almost overnight. Meanwhile, SOCU and other enforcement agencies descend on us, the ordinary with immediate, crushing force. No hesitation. No mercy. No questions about whether the powerful are doing the same — or worse. This isn’t a broken system. This is the system working exactly as they designed it. When the law shields the powerful and stomps on the little guy — the regular people, the working people — it stops being real law. It becomes a weapon used to keep people in their place. On purpose. A government that only enforces the rules when it’s convenient for them isn’t leading — it’s controlling. And that’s a completely different thing. They’re not just limiting your freedom. They’re tearing it apart piece by piece.
Freedom isn’t just about not being locked up. It means being able to speak your mind without being scared of what happens next. It means being able to join together with others and push back. It means being able to demand that the people running things — on your dime, in your name — actually answer for what they do. The people in charge don’t answer to anyone. They don’t explain their decisions. They don’t justify their actions. And they have no intention of changing that. A government that won’t allow itself to be questioned isn’t really a government at all — it’s a takeover. Citizens who can’t hold power accountable, their liberty isn’t diminished, but has been extinguished. Democracy cannot survive a government that distributes justice, resources, and opportunity based on who you are, where you live, what you look like, or which faith you practice. Yet that is precisely what Guyana’s people face — a system that rewards loyalty and punishes difference. When communities are marginalized while others are favoured, when public goods become political gifts, when governance is wielded as a tool of ethnic and class division — the social contract that democracy depends upon shatters.
A divided population is a controlled population. The powerful have always known this. Division is not a failure of authoritarian governance. It is its most reliable instrument.