The PPPC’s dirty politics

Jul 02, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – The PPPC has been known to play dirty. But even with such a history, one must be concerned that the ruling party may be using state funds to go after one of its political rivals. For this, the PPPC government deserves public indictment.

What we know and what was announced publicly was that the Government of Guyana had hired a lobbying firm, Continental Strategy LLC, to provide lobbying services and Government relations services. It was assumed that this was part of the government’s effort to secure the national interest including in relation to the territorial threat by Venezuela. It could not have been related, at the time, to the need for assist in removing the proposed tariffs imposed by Trump because when the company was contracted this issue had not yet arisen. But this issuer could and should have been later added to the lobbyist’s remit

A recent report in the press suggests that this lobbying firm is being used for partisan advantages and specifically to go after one of the political rivals of the PPPC – Azruddin Mohamed, a Guyanese businessman, sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Azmo as he is referred to in Guyana is, inconveniently for the PPPC, a declared presidential candidate.

Continental Strategy, the lobbying firm, should be asked to explain who instructed it to draft no less than five tweets—yes, tweets—for dissemination by a U.S. Congressman, branding AZMO as a Maduro puppet. What we have here are questions as to whether the PPPC government paid a foreign entity to mount a character smear campaign against a domestic political rival. What name shall we give to this grotesque marriage of public expenditure and private vendetta? Certainly not “foreign affairs,” unless we now equate diplomacy with defamation. It is not just improper. It is unethical. It is abusive. And it may well be illegal.

State funds are constitutionally appropriated for public purposes, not partisan warfare. When a government spends national revenues to secure the vilification of a citizen abroad—much less a political opponent running for public office—it crosses a line not merely of propriety but of legality. This is use of a foreign policy apparatus to achieve partisan ends. It weaponizes diplomacy as a bludgeon against the democratic process. In a functioning democracy, this would be grounds not merely for outrage but for impeachment.

And what of the tweet itself? “In the U.S. Congress we are alarmed by the regime in Venezuela’s attempt to undermine Guyana through its pro-Maduro puppet candidate Azruddin Mohamed, who is sanctioned by OFAC!” One might be tempted to laugh if the implications were not so grave. Are we to believe that the sovereignty of Guyana is so fragile that it can be so easily undone?

More insultingly still are the implications: that the PPPC government may be attempting to conscript American lawmakers into its partisan feuds. This is the true irony: the PPPC accusing its rival of foreign allegiance while itself engaging in foreign orchestration. The sin is not only hypocrisy—it is projection.
And what does this say to the people of Guyana? That their tax dollars are better spent on tweets than on schools? That their democracy is too fragile to withstand dissent, and must therefore be policed by lobbyists, not ballots? What confidence can the Guyanese public hold in an election whose outcome is being manipulated not in campaign halls but in Capitol Hill’s corridors?

Is this the future of democratic contestation in the Caribbean? That rivals will be neutralized not by debate but by dollars, not by votes but by viral slogans? The PPPC has, by its conduct, resorted to a dangerous practice of using the instruments of state to suppress opposition forces under the guise of foreign diplomacy. The implications are not just national; they are hemispheric.

In all of this, the most chilling silence is that of accountability. No statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, no rebuke from the Office of the President, no government inquiry. And why would there be? The fox does not report the missing chickens. But make no mistake: this is a scandal of immense proportions that resembles some of the allegations levelled against President Donald Trump and his use of his office to go after his political rivals. It was alleged that Donald Trump attempted to conscript a foreign government—Ukraine—to act against his political rival, Joe Biden, in the lead-up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election. These allegations were at the center of Trump’s first impeachment in 2019.

The real fear is that the PPPC may have joined the bandwagon in using state power and the state’s financial resources to go after a political rival. Not only would this be wrong but it raises the possibility of a government that is willing to spend millions to destroy its rivals and may be inclined to turn the same tools against the people.

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

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• Azruddin Mohamed, Dirty politics, Peeping Tom, PPPC

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