Parliament: Guyana’s playground for newcomers, schemers  

Nov 09, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

---

(Kaieteur News) – Bring out the bugles, November 3 came and went, a bit of an anticlimax.  Parliament convened, called into action, ready to work for the people.  Which people, really?  The people who play their juggling, self-enriching, embarrassing, games in the house of all Guyanese?  Or the real work of real people, who trusted them all?  All eyes were fixed on the Leader of the Opposition.  He made it onto the floor of National Assembly in one piece.  The U.S. ambassador must have had a busy weekend.  What ought to have been as normal as sunshine in the middle of August transformed into abnormality of uncertainty during the first days of November.  The times have been like that for years now.

The Speaker was rewarded for his loyal holding of the line for five years.  He returned.  The Speaker kept his head down, and the We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) leader, MP-in-waiting and Opposition Leader making it into the big-time sailed serenely into the National Assembly.  Now he is the Hon. Azruddin Mohamed.  I said that Guyana isn’t a normal place, didn’t I?  The Hon. Azruddin Mohamed, all suited and tied (hopefully sartorially, and not officially), all neatly coiffed and cuffed (oh no! there, I did it again, my humblest apologies), and greeting his grand day.  Now he has to be less the man in the news, and more the man of destiny, one with a vision.  He better has a strategy.  What will he be?  Maybe, someone mangled and mocked, yet rising to the uppermost chamber of national glory.  We shall see.

Before moving to another frightening potential development inside the once hallowed, now howling, halls of parliament, I must express my personal disappointment publicly.  I should have been named an MP, carrying the banner of the poor and forgotten in Guyana.  Never has one man reportedly helped another man so much to move fabulous riches out of Guyana, and received nothing but caustic soda and incendiary, homegrown devices as his thanksgiving.  Homemade as in coming with the compliments of Freedom House and other nationally high offices of bawdy repute.  Yes, it is only early November; so, I guess I will have to swallow my disappointment and wait for that other turkey on Thanksgiving Day as my recognition and compensation.  This country is not normal.

Now it is time for the real parliamentary challenge that alarms, that prompts the greatest internal upheaval of the spirit.  With parliament as its seat of triumph, its broad field of visionary operation, the returning PPP leaders now have a piece of unfinished business to arrange, finalize, and bring to fruition.  Five seats are all that the environment demands.  Five seats make the PPP untouchable, unstoppable.  And, I shall say for posterity, unimaginable.  For those who thought that the PPP as a government, as a party, as a leadership cadre was bad before, there are heavy seas ahead.  Five seats in the pocket, and the future is settled.  Of course, something big is going to have to come out-of-pocket for that to happen, and the best part is that Guyanese taxpayers are carrying the load.  Except they don’t know how, and frankly don’t care.  Forget about Venezuelans and Commonwealth voters, when five seats can be had with the right meeting of the minds.  Why work so hard, with so many loose threads that can be tracked back to their origins?

For those Guyanese who shudder and recoil in horror, I regret to point out that there is precedent, and it is as recent as seven Decembers ago.  Remember that no-confidence motion and vote.  If then and for what passed, then why not now, when there is more to exchange to make lovely things happen?  The economist in Guyana’s man of the strategical and the magical, the Hon. Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, should be drooling, given the existence of what the textbooks call ‘the double coincidence of wants.’  A supermajority for the PPP and sweet, super consideration for the non-PPP side in the house with the willing.  The odds are overwhelming.  Who will quibble?  Who is so resolute and contented, as not to nibble?  If one could have jumped ship in December 2018, there could be five more longing to join his company.  Like the first-timer floor-crosser from that sinister December had said, it is for the people.  Think, Guyanese, think.  Third term, unfettered expansion of authoritarianism, the reality of a police state, and a helpful judicial stadium packed accordingly and rising to do duty.

The Hon. Azruddin Mohamed, MP if still around, may be the glue that holds his people, the stumbling block that thwarts the machinations of his political opponents.  It makes sense to deliver him to waiting Uncle Sam’s agents.  It will take some getting used to, that one involving honourable, demands much of me.

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

---

• Azruddin Mohamed, GHK Lall, Guyana playground, newcomers, Parliament, schemers

---