The comedy of our politics

Jul 27, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – There is in the politics of Guyana today something both farcical and despairing. It is a kind of theatre without plot, propelled not by policy or vision, but by pantomime. The actors rehearse the same lines each election season, perhaps with more vigour, certainly with more money, but with no discernible desire to confront deeper realities.

The ruling party, the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC), is seized with a kind of self-satisfaction, convinced of its own genius in managing the economy, crunching numbers and constructing concrete. It is this faith in its superior arithmetic that allows it to ridicule its opponents, declaring them to be visionless, directionless, rudderless. And yet, irony thickens the political air—because the PPPC, for all its presumed mastery of planning, as at today has failed to produce a manifesto.

The irony deepens when one considers that WIN—a party which the PPPC caricatures and dismisses as amateurish—has at least done the decent thing and issued something resembling a manifesto, however imperfect. APNU, for its part, is attempting to emulate serious governance with a hastily assembled 100-day plan. They speak of a supplementary Budget, unaware it seems, of the elementary principle that such a Budget can only be supplementary to an original one. But in Guyanese politics, performance substitutes for understanding. Say enough, smile wide, beat chest and offer, above all, a promise of something. The content matters little.

The avoidable, though, remains the oil contract. That there is wealth being siphoned from the bowels of this country is no longer speculation—it is fact. That the agreement signed is abysmal and inimical to the national interest is no longer the lonely cry of a madman—it is now an uncomfortable truth.  And yet, when it comes to the oil contract, the mainstream political parties—PPPC and APNU alike—go mute. They sidestep the matter, terrified not of the voters, but of offending a distant power across the Atlantic.

The APNU says it will hold talks about renegotiating the oil contract. But there is a subtle but significant difference between saying you will hold talks about renegotiating and insisting on renegotiation.

To renegotiate the oil contract would be to confront ExxonMobil. To do so would be, in their minds, to provoke the ire of the United States. And here, the legacy of dependence reveals itself most clearly: an independent country with an independent judiciary, with a booming GDP and burgeoning oil wealth, afraid to ask for a better deal. They fear that mere mention of ring-fencing or of placing meters at the pumps would unleash diplomatic calamity. Instead, they speak of cash grants—temporary sedatives for long-term illness. But even these handouts, popular as they are, cannot be sustained unless the very contract that makes the oil sector a farce is revisited.

WIN, for all its inexperience, has said plainly that it would renegotiate the contract. It would demand ring-fencing.  And while its manifesto may read like a compilation of aspirations borrowed from Facebook comment sections, at least it acknowledges the elephant not just in the room, but sitting on the national chest. The PPPC, in contrast, remains evasive. It offers infrastructure, cement, steel, subsidies—but avoids the central question of fairness, of equity, of dignity.

The public, too, must share some of the blame. Glenn Lall—however caustic, however unrefined his style—has been sounding the alarm for years. He has campaigned with a kind of monomania, a relentless pursuit of one idea: a better deal for Guyana. And yet his calls, however loud, echo mostly into silence. The Guyanese people, in their hearts, may know he is right. But they do not insist on what is right. They do not demand renegotiation. They do not march for meters. They do not petition for ring-fencing. They want grants, roads, scholarships. They want today. And they are told, often with paternal condescension, that oil money contributes less than 40% of the Budget—as though that is a justification for mediocrity.

But this, again, is the tragedy. If oil contributes less than 40%, it is precisely because the contract is so poorly designed. That number is not an inevitability—it is a consequence of policy failure. The failure to renegotiate is not caution—it is cowardice.

And so, the absurdity remains: a government that derides its opponents as clueless, yet unveils no manifesto of its own; an opposition that promises budgets without understanding their nature; a people sedated by short-term offerings and unwilling to insist on long-term justice. Only Glenn Lall, uninvited and brutally frank as he may seem to some, continues his solitary campaign. He remains the voice that refuses to go silent, the man unwilling to sell his country cheap.

It is not romantic. It is not always polite. But it is necessary.

And in the circus that passes for politics in Guyana, where most performers are juggling empty platitudes and ducking the real questions, one cannot help but commend the lone voice who dares to speak of the rigged game.

(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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• comedy, Peeping Tom, Politics, theatre

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