Jimmy Carter was an American phenomenon. We all know about the peanut farmer who became president of the USA – but that’s only half of the (incredible) story!! His claim to fame here is he singlehandedly ensured free and fair elections returned in 1992. This removed the PNC’s yoke from our necks after twenty-eight harrowing years. And he wasn’t even President then!! President Ali summarized it well in his statement noting Carter’s passing:
“His legacy is intertwined with the story of Guyana’s journey towards democracy and development. Jimmy Carter’s name will forever be linked to the electoral reforms that paved the way for free and fair elections in Guyana, breaking the shackles of nearly a quarter-century of political dictatorship. President Carter also understood that democracy’s return had to be fortified by development. As such, after freedom had been restored in October 1992, he helped to support the crafting of a National Development Strategy (NDS) for Guyana and to mobilise resources for reconstruction.”
We should flesh out that overview. After he’d massively lost the 1980 elections to Reagan, Carter returned to his native Plains village in Georgia. Everyone expected him to follow the well-trodden path of ex-presidents to build a Presidential Library and hit the million-dollar lecture circuit. But the homespun Carter surprised the pundits when– in conjunction with Emory University – he launched a “Carter Center” next to the library in Atlanta. It was gonna “improve lives by resolving conflicts; advancing democracy and preventing diseases”.
Cheddi Jagan contacted the Center – which had already been attuned to electoral challenges to democracy. In 1989, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega attempted to steal an election that wasn’t going his way. Infuriated, Carter climbed atop a platform in the election commission and demanded to know, in Spanish, whether the balloting officers were thieves!! Then he called a press conference and told the world the vote was bogus!! In Guyana, Carter’s first hurdle was to get Desmond Hoyte to agree to unravel the Burnhamite “innovations” that rigged elections for decades.
First, there was the need for a new voter’s list that Hoyte agreed to in 1990 – but which delayed the elections to 1992. The other critical change was “counting ballots cast at the place of poll” to circumvent switching ballots when taken to one central PNC-controlled location.
On the day of the elections, Hamilton Green orchestrated some thugs to storm the GECOM main office on Croal Steet – with Carter inside.
Carter got in touch with George HW Bush at the White House and it only took one phone call to make Hoyte stand down. He called in the GDF to clear the rabble!! Pretty soon, the vote was totalled and Jagan was sworn in as President.
Democracy was returned to Guyana!!
…his (humanist) due
When Jimmy Carter decided to run for the US Presidency, most thought a hick from the sticks of Georgia didn’t stand a chance. They forgot he was a graduate of the US Naval Academy and was being fast-tracked in the US budding nuclear submarine fleet who quit after his peanut farmer died unexpectedly. He took over running the peanut warehouse – which crop the US had carefully nurtured and subsidized – rejoined the integrated Baptist Church and entered local politics. He was later elected Governor of Georgia – still a southern backwater!!
He, however, turned that into an asset by stressing he was an outsider = untainted by the Washington swamp!! He stressed a simple, moral politics that stressed human rights for Black Americans and other minorities. He was undone, however, by that same humanism when he accepted the Shah of Iran to be treated for cancer in the US.
This infuriated the Islamicists who seized the US Embassy – making Carter look helpless during the elections!!
…the finger
Hamilton Green has consistently derided Carter as a Southern bigot. But it was the same Carter who between 1986 and 2021 eradicated the Guinea worm disease with 3.5 million cases in 21 countries in Africa and Asia.
