Elections 2025 – Lesson one- Free and fair

Sep 07, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

---

Kaieteur News – Elections 2025 were free.  To a point.  Elections 2025 were fair.  Well, that depends on how one defines fair.  It is likely that Mr. Azruddin Mohamed of We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) has a different definition of both free and fair that differs from that of the PPP, which won the contest.  The arbiters, the international elections observer missions, had a heavy sounding term to summarize the elections proceedings: incumbency advantage causing uneven playing field.  When I used to string words like that together, people turned glassy-eyed.  Not that the foreign people did, everyone understands as though it is the alphabet.  So, let me get this on the table, then out of the way: how can there be free and fair when incumbency advantage leads to a playing field that is a minefield?  Unless the opposition contestants had night vision, a state-of-the-art GPS, and full body armor, their goose was cooked.  In a nutshell, the elections were over before they started, thanks to the incomparable skills of the winners, the PPP.  How could it not win, when the ruling party enjoyed (and made the fullest use) of all the elements of incumbency advantage?

The voting process was peaceful, but free as a bee is a little trickier.  According to WIN, its people were harassed, blocked, thwarted, denied, led astray and generally pushed around, and away from a voting booth.  Welcome to the democratic process called elections in Guyana.  It is a rough game, with the veterans toughened by many wars in the trenches.  It is remarkable how well the newcomers, [let’s face it, rank amateurs in a nasty game] did.  When dead cats [black ones] weren’t thrown in front of them, they fell into the fresh holes dug and waiting to provide a warm welcome.  Now, some of my good friends in the PPP may insist that there is nothing wrong with any of those, and that in their dictionary, that qualifies as fair.  In other words, elections serve as a teaching aid, and slow learners are advised to bone up before they enter the ring.   I don’t know which school the luminaries in the PPP attended, but all the ones that allowed me to take a seat taught me that free has no inhibitions, free lacks tricks, and free means exactly that: no charge, no penalties.

Relative to incumbency advantage in the context of WIN, surely, he didn’t call the police on himself, or invited a drone to prowl over his head?  Or could have been a party to the beating he took from agents of the state operating in the state-controlled media.  The record is of state agencies, national institutions, falling over themselves to get their pound of flesh out of him.  The fact that the WIN’s leader is still in one piece is a short story waiting to be published.  The PNC and the AFC also had their problems with incumbency advantage (of which more will follow), and the disadvantage to which it put those competing with the officeholders.  In Las Vegas, it is said that one can never beat the house.  The PPP just proved it, and the foreigners just added the caption in large fonts and bolded letters.

How about fair, what could be said about that relative to the elections now taking a sleeping pill?  There is fair and then there is another kind of fair.  The incumbents fell in love with the latter specimen.  Look it is Sunday, and everyone needs its serenity, plus some much-needed rest.  Of course, it would take a barbarian and a pagan like me not to care.  I don’t want to, but I have to; proceed, that is.  I begin in Asia and end up at some local GECOM center.  From subcontinent citizens to national ID cards.  I had to pinch myself, because if I recall well, the British in Guyana no longer has any gripping power.  True enough, but there were those clusters of Commonwealth voters, with transportation thoughtfully provided, a uniformed official welcoming party waiting to receive.  It is not so much the hospitality and amenities that provoked, but how widespread this was, and how long before September 1^st was this program being perfected?  There was no census report, but there was that Commonwealth voting contingent to backfill any shortfalls.  Here’s my finding: anything that has to be carried on in secret, and then sprung upon the unsuspecting cannot be fair.  If it’s fair, why hide?

It cannot be fair when legit Guyanese are inhibited in some way from voting, while foreigners vote freely.  How many of them, may I ask?  One more: Mohamed was called a Maduro man.  How many Venezuelans (Maduro people) did the PPP sneak into the voting mix?  Verdict: elections were free and fair, but only as far as such could be thrown.  Try throwing a mule, and that’s how free and fair things were.  With skills like these, the PPP should be able to overpower Exxon soon.  Or, at least, pull a fast one on the Yanks.  Just like it did on the PNC and AFC.

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

---

• Azruddin Mohamed, elections 2025, free and fair, GHK Lall

---