Jun 23, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

(Kaieteur News) – The elections commission did not fall from heaven. It came from the messy compromises of men. The so-called Carter-Price formula, that tired but enduring offspring of the 1990s political crisis, was not meant to enshrine aloof neutrality; it was meant to broker peace between two parties locked in perpetual suspicion.

Jimmy Carter came in 1991 and reminded Guyana’s political leaders of their inability to trust themselves. So, under the guiding hand of Jimmy Carter, the PPP and the PNC agreed to a commission that was not purely technical but political — deliberately so — so that both sides might have confidence in the process by seeing themselves reflected in it.