A trick always up their sleeve

Jul 31, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – The political season in Guyana is never quite simple, though it comes with banners flapping on lamp posts, promises dripping from podiums, and the low, ever-present hum of mistrust. This year, as the electoral breeze winds through towns, villages and communities, something strange has happened. The place is relatively calm.

Yes, calm. That old stranger in Guyanese politics, rarely seen but always hoped for, has drifted in on the shoulders of an election campaign that, so far, has been remarkably free of physical violence. No one urinating on campaign flags, no missiles being hurled, no roving bands of thugs disrupting public meetings. The Peoples Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) has, against all odds and inclinations, been holding meetings in traditional PNCR strongholds. That alone is worth noting. For years the PPPC approached certain neighborhoods with the same caution one reserves for haunted houses or jaguar trails. And yet, here they are, brave in their advance, armed not with goodwill but political calculation.

It is no secret that the emergence of the WIN party has rattled the PPPC’s cage. WIN, with its populist cadence, has tiptoed into the PPPC’s base like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs—graceful, careful, but undeniably disruptive. Rather than engage in healthy debate, the PPPC has resorted to its vintage instincts: smearing, harassing, deplatforming, and using the instruments of state to tie shoelaces together. Dirty politics is an old tool in their shed, worn smooth from use.

And yet the PNCR—the party that once ruled with a clenched fist and a wide eye—has not risen to the bait. There have been no provocations, no loudspeaker brawls, no disruptions. There is a stillness, and in that stillness, one begins to hope. But with the PNCR, one must never get too comfortable. This party, this institution of calculated delay and selective participation, never quite shows its hand during the campaign. It is only after the votes are cast—when the people believe the work is done—that the tricks begin. Mostly after. Always with a shrug and a smirk.

In 1992, during the watershed return to democratic elections, a PNCR strongman—more iron than man—staged protests at the gates of the Guyana Elections Commission, attempting to abort democracy at the altar. The plan didn’t work, but the intent revealed much. In 1997, the “runners,” those anonymous shadows tasked with ferrying results, ran not to GECOM but straight to Congress Place, as if results were best verified by partisans rather than the impartial.

The years rolled on. In 2001, the country was plunged into a quasi-insurrection, with a criminal gang reigning terror and the army standing with blinkers on. By 2006, things had settled. The political air held fewer embers. But the quiet would not last. In 2011, APNU—heir to the PNCR legacy—refused to accept the presidential results, casting doubt where there was only arithmetic. And so it is with them. It is never the campaign they contest, but the outcome. In 2020, a bed sheet and spread sheet became principal props in a nefarious plot to steal an election. Guyana attracted the sort of attention that it should never attract.

This is not the behavior of a party that respects the electorate. This is not the action of a movement that trusts the will of the people. It is the skulking posture of a group that believes in power more than democracy, in maneuver rather than mandate. The PNCR does not rage before the ballots fall. No, they wait in the tall grass, and pounce when the tally is done. It is a tradition, a heritage of post-election protest dressed in the garb of principle.

And so, even as this campaign unfolds with the uncharacteristic grace of civil order, let us not mistake the silence for consent. The tricks are not gone. They are simply sleeping. Guyana deserves better. It deserves political parties that rise to the challenge of democracy, not merely seek to game it. The people know how to vote. They do not need post-election whisper campaigns, choreographed chaos, or midnight emissaries bearing “concerns” instead of results. If there is to be peace, let it not be conditional. If there is to be an election unmarred, let it be unmarred from start to finish. The electorate has spoken before and will speak again. What it demands now is not perfection, but maturity. The sort of maturity that sees defeat not as fraud but as lesson. The sort of maturity that understands that when the curtain falls on polling day, the show is not over but transformed—from contest to service. Let the parties take their seats accordingly. Let the trick sleeves remain empty.

(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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• Elections, Peeping Tom, Political season, trick

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