How the PPP/C won big but performed small

Oct 13, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – In politics illusion is half the act. The People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), flushed with the triumphal  “landslide” victory, would have us believe it has achieved a mandate of historic proportions — a national outpouring of  confidence in its governance.

The red flags wave, the music blares, and the leaders pose with the self-satisfied air of emperors who think the empire still believes in them. But peel back the bunting and the illusion begins to fade. The numbers tell a different story — one of complacency, sloppy execution, and a victory not earned but inherited from the exhaustion and disorganisation of the opposition.

Yes, the PPP/C has retained power and by a comfortable margin. But this comfort rests not on a surge in popularity, nor on a brilliant campaign strategy, but on the political inertia of its rivals and the apathy of the electorate. The cold arithmetic reveals the fraudulence of the celebration. The ruling party gained a mere 9,000-plus vote more than it did in 2020. Yet somehow, this modest bump translated into a near four-point percentage boost over 2020. The difference was not in the hearts won, but in the hearts that stayed home.

The great landslide, then, was built not on enthusiasm but on erosion — the slow crumbling of opposition turnout, the splintering of the APNU coalition, and the quiet despair of citizens who have ceased to believe that politics can make any difference to their lives. What the PPP/C has secured is not an endorsement but an empty victory.

One need not be an oracle to see how the party brought this upon itself. The campaign, such as it was, stumbled from rally to rally like a tired circus troupe recycling its old tricks. The grand rallies, meant to project momentum and mass appeal, instead revealed fatigue. The same faces, bused and recycled, clapping to the same slogans, shouting to the same music. Even the drone footage — that modern tool of political vanity — could not disguise the thinning crowds. Compared to the surging masses of 2015 and 2020, the recent gatherings were but shadows, their energy forced and their message stale.

Yet inside the party’s echo chamber, the illusion metastasized into conviction: the rallies were “massive,” the enthusiasm “unprecedented,” the support “overwhelming.” The leadership, drunk on its own propaganda, mistook repetition for evidence. And then came the advertising campaign. It was a masterpiece of self-sabotage. One is tempted to imagine the meeting in which this strategy was devised: a handful of consultants, armed with borrowed data and overused buzzwords, convincing themselves that social media alone could swing the undecided voter. Never mind that political research — freely available, even to the lazy — has long established that persuasion, not visibility, wins elections, and that visibility without message is noise. The PPP/C opted for the cheap fix: low-budget social media ads, poorly targeted and easily ignored.

The irony is that the party, flush with the financial spoils of incumbency, could have afforded better. Yet it chose the illusion of modernity over the substance of strategy — a digital mirage that impressed only itself. This was not a campaign designed to persuade; it was a performance designed to reassure. And so, when the votes were counted and the landslide declared, the party celebrated its own mediocrity. Its share of the vote, in numbers, had not meaningfully expanded. Its rallies had not inspired new believers. Its messaging had not moved the swing voter.

What saved it was the collapse of the opposition — a fragmented APNU fighting among itself, its supporters demoralized and its turnout pitiful. And WIN making major inroads. The PPP/C’s “landslide” was the result of arithmetic, not affection. The PPP/C’s style this election was one of complacency dressed as confidence, spectacle standing in for persuasion.  It was a campaign that promised everything and believed nothing. The governing party’s problem is not that it cannot win; it is that it no longer knows how to earn victory.

Therein lies the danger. Victories such as this one breed delusion. The leadership will read the numbers not as a warning but as vindication. The machinery of government will roll on, greased by the myth of popular approval. Meanwhile, the apathy deepens, the opposition fragments further, and the electorate grows more cynical. The PPP/C may think it has secured another five years of power. In truth, it has secured another five years of disbelief. Democracy, like any market, depends on demand. When citizens stop demanding better, the suppliers of power stop trying to provide it. The PPP/C’s victory is the triumph of a system that no longer expects excellence — from its rulers, its opposition, or even itself. The landslide was not a wave of passion but a shrug of indifference. And for that, the ruling party should not be jubilant but uneasy.

(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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• APNU, Peeping Tom, politics illusion, PPP/C, RDC

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