The arithmetic of representation

Sep 04, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

---

Kaieteur News – There is a peculiar comfort in numbers. They lie before us arranged neatly, each one solid, hard, irrefutable. Yet in politics, as in life, numbers are rarely as final as they look.

The preliminary tallies from the statements of polls of Guyana’s 2025 general elections, still wearing the dust of counting stations and the faint anxiety of officials, have already been taken up by the public mind and put to work, like so many mules drawing a cart. These tallies are unofficial, yes, but they whisper the shape of what is to come.

By my reckoning, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic is poised to take 36 of the 65 seats in the National Assembly. The WIN—the upstart with an acronym that carries more optimism than modesty will claim 16. A chastened APNU, whose history in Guyanese politics is longer than the roads that crisscross the coastland, is assigned 12. The Forward Guyana Movement, a sprout in the political garden, emerges with 1.

Numbers, again: 36, 16, 12, 1. Together they describe the full cast of parliamentary life for the next five years. But they also trace the limits of ambition. The PPPC had aimed, loudly and publicly, for 45 seats. It ends, instead, with 36, just enough to hold a majority, but not the emphatic majority it had rehearsed on the campaign trail.

In politics, this is the difference between striding and tiptoeing. A government with 45 seats may bend the chamber to its will with the self-assurance of a headmaster enforcing discipline. A government with 36, still has a workable majority but must keep an eye of absenteeism – one man said quite recklessly that he may now go to parliament a little more often as if he ought not to be reducing his absenteeism.

A government with a small majority must keep an ear tuned to the hallway, attentive to dissent careful that no one in its own ranks has taken ill or taken offence. Numbers, like nature, have a way of reducing human pomp to practical concerns: a majority is a majority, but the arithmetic of 36 contains reminders of vulnerability.

For the WIN, the story is different. Sixteen seats! In an Assembly of 65, that is a minor triumph, and in Guyanese politics, where new parties are often blown out to sea before their sails are unfurled, it is almost miraculous. It is enough to give the WIN the office of Leader of the Opposition. There will be no frustrating this claim, no arithmetic sleight of hand to deny it. With 16, the WIN stands tall in the chamber, even as it sits opposite the governing benches.

It is worth noting that APNU, once the sturdy rival to the PPPC, has now been reduced to 12 seats. It is the number of persons that show up for the cricket match with just enough to field a team the field. Their voice will echo in the debates; but the day when APNU could speak as the singular alternative has passed into history, or into memory. One wonders if memory will be kind. And then, there is the FGM, with its solitary seat. One is a lonely number, but it is also an historic one. A lone legislator can, in the right circumstances, hold the attention of a nation. More likely, he or she will hold the floor for a few minutes at a time, speaking bravely into the chamber’s indifference. Yet a single seat is also a foothold, and footholds are how mountains are climbed. If there is irony here, it is that Guyana, after so much passion in its campaigns, after weeks of rallies and promises, arrives at an outcome that is both stable and unspectacular. The PPPC governs, the WIN opposes, the APNU recedes, the FGM appears. The Assembly is full; the arithmetic works.

Still, we should remember the numbers that these allocations are based on are preliminary. Based on the final declaration, they may shift slightly. But the outlines of the distribution of seats in the National Assembly are clear enough. Guyana is entering a season in which majorities will govern with caution, oppositions will dream of wider benches, and citizens will measure promises against the arithmetic of 36, 16, 12, and 1. Democracy, in its bluntest form, is a matter of counting. But in its richest form, it is a matter of living with the results. So, the PPPC, with its 36, must govern. The WIN, with its 16, must oppose. The APNU, with its 12, must reckon with loss. The FGM, with its 1, must imagine itself larger.

And the people of Guyana, with their many voices distilled into these few numbers, must remind themselves that in politics, as in arithmetic, it is not only the totals that matter but the stories they conceal.

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

---

• arithmetic, Peeping Tom, Politics, representation

---