Guyana opposition parties

Feb 17, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

---

Hard truths…

Kaieteur News- It was Appollo 13 Astronaut, Jack Swigert, who said those famous words, “Ah, Houston, we’ve had a problem here…”  That ancient space history from 1970 had a happy ending.  Fifty-five years later, over here in Georgetown, I have my own troubles.  “Guyana, we’ve a problem.”  Or, more accurately, “Fellow Guyanese, there is a big problem brewing.”  There is nothing past in Guyana’s problem; it is in front of Guyanese, gets bigger and bigger.  It involves the opposition.  Yeah, the opposition: ever hear of them?  See anything of them lately?  Feel any connection to them in any spiritual way?  Or now what is in opposition to the people?

The PPP Government is the best gift that an opposition could want.  The PPP Government is so decayed that it makes a month-old corpse look like a runway supermodel.  The PPP Government is so nasty, tricky, and dirty that it makes the Germans and Russians of a century ago seem like angels and holy men.  Citizens are angry at the government.  More people distrust leaders.  And where is the opposition that overflows with energy, bristles with vigor?  Guyanese desperately need an opposition that is wide awake, on the move, taking no prisoners.  When any Guyanese see what I fail to discern, please send an email.  This is the time when Guyana’s opposition should be at the top of its game, an irrepressible force, a tower of power.  Where is it?  The PPP Government and its supporters rejoice over their stroke of fortune; opposition supporters shrink from what they see, hide from what they fear is on the way.

The opposition has been presented with opportunities almost weekly to push the PPP Government into a tight corner, cutoff its escape routes, stuff it into a sock.  Guyanese are still waiting that kind of opposition to show up.  One week it’s shady land dealings; another day, it’s a mystery US$2 billion gas-to-energy project.  The blueprint justifying its existence exists in one man’s head, or his imagination. The opposition has made some polite noises for the record, and then everything settles back into humdrum routines.  Billions are drawn from the people’s oil safety deposit box, with no accounting, and the opposition did its bit and then went back and had a sit.  What the PPP Government has been doing is the equivalent of declaring war on Guyanese.  The opposition waves its white flag.  It looks off-white nowadays: overuse.  Little opposition research is needed, no deep digging, not with the way that the government conducts the people’s business, chaperones their money.  One big, dirty open book, it is.  Just read a newspaper.

With the opposition seemingly preoccupied with internal mechanics, more disgruntled Guyanese are asking out aloud what is it that they have for a political opposition.  A combined bloc of Guyanese troubled to the point of being incensed at what is being dealt out by those with the power?  A group outraged at the effects on Guyanese, with the vulnerable and hopeful bludgeoned?  Is the opposition, in single file or collectively, genuinely committed to change in this country?  Or, is it merely going through the motions, putting on a pretense of energy and vibrancy?  Where is its potency, is what is on the lips of increasing number of disillusioned Guyanese?  One of the more baffling developments relates to the passive posture of the opposition; passive as in being overly pleased with itself, fooling itself that it is making a difference.  Is it a catalyst for much-needed change or, nothing but a stealth component of the status quo, part of the charade that passes for political insights and political pressures?

Guyanese are looking for that focal point, a rallying cause and cry, of which there are many.  Rampant government corruption.  Crippling cost-of-living environment.  Seething rage over haves and have nots.  Authoritarianism prostituting as democracy.  These have always been, and remains, bread-and-butter flashpoints for authentic opposition parties everywhere.  Few are the self-respecting opposition parties that are frozen in place when there is such a confluence of circumstances, what is present and dominant in today’s soulless and principle-less Guyana.  When the world is awash with visible and voluble public agitations, Guyanese exemplify placidness, with the opposition in the vanguard.  In rich, advanced countries, when citizens believe that they are marginalized, are angry, they show it publicly.  Guyana must be an oasis of satisfied people. In most poor, divided, and backward places that oil showed up, it has taught its shareholder hosts a harsh, jarring story.  It is the resource curse, one of a different variety: its politics.  Stakeholders are superior to national shareholders.

Oil politics, along with wheeler-dealer traditions, have forever been a part of its history.  Distressed Guyanese are convinced that the government has two-timed them with oil management.  No less unhappily, they weigh how much the opposition could be into double-dealing them with it.  Government leaders are thrilled to be completely abject before now entrenched oil companies.  Quick aside: America just eased its foreign bribery standards.  Based on this standard, the concern among Guyanese is whether the two-timing government has solid company in a likeminded opposition.  Object and end up being a reject.  It is the poignancy of oil that has its own biblical version of sheep and goats.  Meaning, winners and losers.  In the bitter Guyana world of have and have nots, the opposition must shape up, standup, and step up.  Whether it has the time, the authentic drive, and is up to the challenge at hand, well, that is a curious story: part fragments, part fickle.

(Guyana opposition parties)

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

---

• Gas-to-Energy project, Guyana, hard truths, opposition parties, PPP Government

---