United States Ambassador to Guyana Nicole Theriot has expressed her disappointment over suggestions in some circles that she and the United States are attempting to interfere in Guyana’s electoral process. The ambassador faced criticism in some quarters after warning that US-Guyana relations could be affected if an individual sanctioned by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) were to enter Parliament.
“I was a little upset by that characterisation simply because I was stating facts. I was asked what being OFAC-sanctioned meant in terms of a US government being able to work with an individual and I simply gave the facts that have occurred in other countries where OFAC sanctioned individuals had been a member of the government and how the US government had to adjust how we worked with that government,” Ambassador Theriot told reporters today in response to questions.
“We have absolutely no interest in interfering in your elections. I was asked a question, I gave the facts as I understand them, as they are published on our Department of Treasury website. I have no interest or intention of interfering in the Government of Guyana’s elections. This is a sovereign country, you run your elections as you see fit…How you run your elections is entirely up to you,” the Ambassador added.
Last month, Ambassador Theriot had stated that the US would be concerned if sanctioned businessman Azruddin Mohamed is elected a parliamentarian.
In 2024, OFAC announced that it sanctioned Nazar Mohamed and his son, Azruddin, as well as several of their companies.
Mohamed has since launched a political party called, We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) and he running as the presidential candidate.
His party has been approved by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to contest the elections on September 1.
Meanwhile, the US is offering support to the Guyana Police Force (GPF) for security training for elections.
“At this moment, they’re sending quite a few supervisory police officers to the New York Police Academy to be provided with training on elections security to include crowd control and how to handle any sort of civil unrest that may arise. We also have a team from the Miami Dade Sheriff’s Department coming in on the August 18 to do training with both the supervisory but also the line police officers, the guys who are out on the street, to do training with them,” the Ambassador revealed.
Additionally, the US is a major funder of the OAS Electoral Observer Mission which will be observing Guyana’s elections, the ambassador said.
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