Expecting Working-Class Policies from the Present Government Is Wishful Thinking

Apr 23, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

---

Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News- Karl Marx once declared that “the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class.” This observation is as true in 21st-century Guyana as it was in 19th-century Europe. While many may believe that elections determine the course of a country and that political power lies solely with those who hold elected office, the real power in Guyana has long rested in the hands of a small but immensely wealthy oligarchic class—one that operates from the shadows, not from Parliament.

This elite class—the economic czars of Guyana—have succeeded in capturing the state, not through ballots, but through influence, financing, and strategic manipulation. Their fingerprints are all over the country’s political landscape. While they may not campaign on public platforms or sit in Cabinet meetings, their will is reflected in policy, appointments, and state contracts. It is they—not the electorate—who are the ultimate selectors and vetters of who gets to lead.

This reality explains much about the current configuration of political power in Guyana and, more crucially, why any expectation of working-class-friendly policies from the present government is a dangerous delusion.

Let us rewind a little.

Years ago, when President Bharrat Jagdeo’s second constitutional term was coming to an end, a brazen campaign emerged advocating for a third term. Billboards went up. Buttons were printed. Commercials aired. The groundswell of public support appeared organic, but it wasn’t. It was orchestrated. Behind that campaign was a powerful consortium of business elites, desperate to keep in office the leader under whose tenure their fortunes had multiplied.

Was it just about loyalty? Partly. The economic aristocracy in Guyana rewards those who have been good for business. But more than that, it was about insurance. Despite their investments being protected by contracts and laws, the scars of post-colonial economic instability run deep. The experience of the Burnham years—when an anti-capitalist turn saw businesses nationalized and fortunes erased—still haunts them. What they wanted from a third Jagdeo term was not just continuity, but security.

But when the constitutional path for a third term was definitively blocked, the elite class didn’t give up. They adjusted. Unable to keep their man in power, they decided to make the next one.

Why leave the selection of a future President to chance—especially one who might challenge their privileges—when they could anoint a candidate more amenable to their interests? The goal was never democratic pluralism; the goal was the perpetuation of a system in which political leadership remains subordinate to economic might. And so began the quiet piloting of a candidate into position.

What we are now witnessing is the culmination of that effort of elite consensus.  It was the Central Executive of the party that chose the PPPC’s presidential candidate, not the general membership, and definitely not from any poll of the larger support base of the party.

This is why expecting policies that genuinely empower workers, equitably redistribute wealth, and regulate corporate excess is a stretch too far. The political leadership may carry the banner of the party once rooted in Marxist thought, but the ideological compass now points firmly toward capital, not labour.

Even Jagan himself, lionized as the champion of the poor, was forced to accommodate the business class in order to govern. During the run-up to the 1992 elections, it was not the Americans alone who pressured the PPP to ditch the more radical elements of the Patriotic Coalition for Democracy. It was the same economic class—then emboldened by the Hoyte administration and now emboldened by oil wealth—that vetoed Clive Thomas, a progressive economist, from becoming the Prime Ministerial candidate.

Today, that same class—albeit with different faces—continues to pull the strings. They do not trust populists. They fear those who speak of redistribution or regulation. And they act swiftly and ruthlessly to keep such ideas out of power.

So when Guyanese citizens complain that the cost of living is spiralling, the national minimum wage is too low, and that housing remains unaffordable despite the oil boom, they must remember: they did not elect a government free to act in their interest. They elected a government already spoken for.

Until this power dynamic is confronted—until Guyanese working people build countervailing institutions strong enough to check the power of the oligarchs—there will be no working-class agenda. There will only be the appearance of governance and the reality of management on behalf of the rich.

The government may wear the garments of democracy, but the tailor is money, and the thread is influence.

Karl Marx was right. The ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class. And in Guyana, the rulers are not in Parliament—they are in private businesses.

(Expecting Working-Class Policies from the Present Government Is Wishful Thinking)

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

---

• constitutional term, Elections, Peeping Tom, President Bharrat Jagdeo’s, wealthy oligarchic class

---