People on the move

Jul 16, 2025 Editorial, News

Kaieteur News – It is the season of moving, with one political aspirant after another making moves from where they were long established to what they long reviled. Political creatures have a sharp sense of when to swallow their pride, and set themselves up with the right positioning of themselves at the right angles in the hope of earning a prize. Any bone thrown at them, regardless of how bare, is welcomed, since where they were has none to offer them. This year’s elections have been exceptional, with so much moving and realigning as to make the eyes glaze. It is the way democracy works, with one of its features being the freedom to make a choice, to move. We applaud that standard, but also question how much the nation’s massive oil wealth contributed to the movements of men and women from one political party to another.

Of conspicuous note is the fact that no one has made a move, or signaled any interest in moving, from the governing PPPC. If there is no moving, it is reasonable that there will be no endorsing of anyone outside of the PPPC. They are not looking to move away from the PPPC, they have their hearts set on moving up to the higher levels of recognition and seniority in the party’s structure. The fact that not one PPPC member has moved out of the party, and aligned themselves with another team, can be interpreted in one of several ways, maybe all of them coming together.

The PPPC, as an organization, as a political body, has that amount of control over its members, every one of them. As many Guyanese appreciate, both within the ruling party and outside of it, there’s the cult of leadership that is worshipped and feared. Arguably, its members sell themselves on the idea that their party and their leaders are the cleanest and truest relative to complying with what democracy demands. As commanding as the preceding may be, there is a pull that is still stronger: the intoxicating touch of oil money, and abundance of it. The touch and seduction of oil money have been so powerful and so consuming explains why so many Guyanese have had to be contented with so little of it channeled to them. It explains also why many of the political figures moving and realigning, endorsing and crossing over, have moved in primarily one direction. Mostly it has been to the PPPC, and for that most ancient of human factors.

Greed has been around for as long as human beings have existed. For some men and women, the more they get, the more they want, the more they try to grab. It is of scant concern to them that they have to kick the weaker out of competing for the next fattening dollar, and the next. There are all these reports, and the physical evidence, of enormous unexplained wealth, that cannot be denied, and cannot be concealed. Some of those who are outside of the PPPC machinery look on, weigh their personal prospects (where they are), and then conclude that they have to go where the money is. Since PPPC members are stuck inseparably to where they are, there must be much sweet lavishness that glues them there. Outsiders want a piece of that, dream about how they must play their cards to get the best results for themselves. It has been mostly to the PPPC, which has total control of the nation’s purse strings.

Others have moved from one opposition party to another. They sense that the ruling party is vulnerable at the polls, due to rampant corruption, mismanagement of the oil wealth, and severe citizen discontent. In all the moving and endorsing, few are so untutored as to leave out serving citizens as the prime motivator for separating from one party and reattaching to another. We question what comes first for those fixing themselves to what gives them unbeatable odds. Is it the condition of the people and the state of the country? Or is it about the power of money operating with its usual magnetisms? There will be winners and losers, and we wait to see who did well for themselves, who fared poorly.

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Editorial, Elections, political, PPPC

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