Something is in the air

Jul 04, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – There is something stirring in the air. You can’t quite name it, but you know it is coming. You can feel that an upset may be in the making in this year’s elections. I speak, of course, of AZMO.

Yes, the AZMO wagon continues its improbable lurch throughout the rural and hinterland areas of Guyana. The AZMO wagon is attracting crowds that, while modest, possess a peculiar energy. These are not the rented or opportunistic audiences of officialdom, complete with plastic chairs and curries. These are people who, with their feet and their presence, are saying: We are watching. And perhaps, we are weighing.

I do not yet believe that AZMO—Azruddin Mohamed, a name now whispered as both joke and prophecy—will win a seat.  But, candidly, I am beginning to doubt my own belief. Because the reception he’s receiving from ordinary citizens defies the script. And whenever reality diverges from the script, it is the script that must be reexamined.

There is a Guyanese saying: “God don’t like ugly.” It is a homespun judgment against unfairness—a reminder that the universe has eyes, and sometimes, indignation finds its own bullhorn. What the working class sees in AZMO is not a saviour, not even a statesman, but a man who is being kicked when he is down. They see the venom, the vitriol, the vulgar abuse from those who wield state power, and they say, “This is not right. This is taking it too far.”

And it may be that, come election day, they will not so much vote for AZMO as vote against what is being done to him.  This is not loyalty. This is recoil. This is sympathy bending into solidarity. Because, while they may not like him as their ideal candidate, they like even less the smug cruelty with which he is being pilloried. And so, in that quietly combustible way that democracies sometimes behave, they may decide to send a message — not to elevate him, necessarily, but to rebuke those who believe they can destroy a man for daring to have political ambitions.

But that’s not the whole of it. There is another undercurrent, a second draft in the wind. The people gathering around AZMO may be carrying more than sympathy; they may be carrying a grudge — a long one, decades old, against the educated political class. The lawyers, doctors, economists, and engineers who have expertly managed to engineer misery and prescribe hardship. There is a feeling among the working poor that they have been betrayed, not by thugs, but by scholars. And now they want a man who talks not like a technocrat, but like a neighbour.

The AZMO effect, then, is not about the special talents of one man. It is about the long and weary failure of a system that has become too top-heavy and too tone-deaf to feel the rumble beneath its feet. A system so secure in its own rot that it no longer recognises its smell. And when people point out the stench, it does not clean up. It attacks the nose.

The ruling party, in particular, seems to take every dissent as a personal slight. Criticism is not an invitation to reflect but a cue to pounce. Those who raise a different voice are not engaged, they are erased—or at least they try. But this tactic, once effective, now appears desperate, like an old magician pulling the same rabbit from the same hat, long after the audience has stopped clapping.

And so, when AZMO hands a cheque to a football club or buys groceries for a family, it lands with disproportionate weight. Not because it is transformative—but because it highlights, with almost surgical cruelty, the absence of government in the everyday lives of the governed. These small acts, which in a functioning system would be merely kind, now appear revolutionary.

It would be easy, and perhaps comforting, to say that all this will pass — that the novelty will wear off, that the old loyalties will hold, that the old machines will deliver. But I’m not so sure anymore. Something has shifted. People are tired of enduring, tired of being told to wait for the trickle, tired of trusting systems that never deliver, tired of hoping.

The AZMO effect may be a symptom, not a cure. But symptoms tell us what is wrong. And this one is screaming. The people want something new. Or at least, they want something not what they have. They want respect, not contempt. They want to be heard, not managed. They want leaders who stand and sit around with them, not leaders who speak to them from podiums and head tables.

And in this muddled moment, they are willing to gamble. On someone. On anyone. Even AZMO. The political establishment, in all its sash and ceremony, may scoff. It may smear and mock and spin and suppress. But what it cannot do is pretend that nothing is happening. Because something is happening. The air smells different. The mood feels different. The crowds act differently. And in Guyana, where the winds of change often blow softly before they blow hard, it would be foolish not to notice.

(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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• AZMO, Azruddin Mohamed, Guyana Elections 2025, Peeping Tom

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