Tantrum against truth

Nov 21, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – One could, with the right mix of cynicism have predicted the reaction from the halls of Freedom House to the European Union Election Observer Mission’s Report on this year’s general and regional elections in Guyana. The People’s Progressive Party/Civic, having just secured another term through the alchemy of incumbency and vindictive politics, will not be happy about the European Union Election Observation Mission’s final report.

The PPP/C, in office, is not a political party so much as a perpetual grievance machine, It is an entity whose happiness is contingent on universal, uncritical acclamation. It is a regime that mistakes scrutiny for sedition and regards any observation not ending in a standing ovation as an act of profound hostility.

But none of this should be unexpected? The party, having successfully conflated its own fortunes with those of the state itself, can brook no dissent. Its appetite for praise is boundless, but its tolerance for critique is non-existent.

The PPP/C has the temperament of the thin-skinned autocrat, forever wounded by the impertinence of a world that refuses to confirm its own flawless self-image. So, when a meticulous, 76-page document arrives—not from a political opponent, but from a respected international body—laying bare the mechanics of its victory, the reaction is not introspection, but indignation.

In the eyes of the PPP/C, the report is not a mirror reflecting reality, but a dagger aimed at the heart of the party and its leadership. To be critiqued, after all, is to be seen as fallible, and the PPP/C’s mythology admits no such flaw.

The EU EOM’s report, a model of diplomatic understatement, is a devastating catalog of democratic decay. It paints a picture not of an election contested on a level field, but of a state apparatus hijacked for partisan triumph. The most egregious abuses were committed in the bright, unforgiving light of day, with the brazen confidence of a power that believes itself unaccountable.

Foremost among these sins is the wholesale misuse of state resources, a practice so endemic it forms the very bedrock of the PPP/C’s campaign. The report details how the President and his administration became a traveling ribbon-cutting circus, inaugurating a “significant increase” of hospitals, schools, and roads in the months leading to the poll. These were not sober affairs of state, but de facto party rallies, swathed in party colours, where public projects were presented as personal gifts from the ruling party. The state’s treasury, the people’s treasury, was transformed into a campaign war chest, blurring the line between government and party until it vanished altogether.

This fusion was perfected in the state media. The state-owned broadcasters, NCN TV and Voice of Guyana, were reduced to party megaphones, devoting up to 98% of their election coverage to the ruling party. The President’s speeches, indistinguishable from campaign stump performances, saturated the airwaves. Meanwhile, a “large part” of this electoral airtime was filled with unlabelled promotional clips for the PPP/C—political advertising masquerading as public information. This was not bias; it was a propaganda blitz, a deliberate starvation of the electorate’s right to balanced information. Critical independent journalists were said to have been threatened with legal action and publicly vilified by high-ranking officials, while government advertising payments were also said to have been withheld from non-compliant newspapers. The message was clear: the airwaves and the front pages belong to us.

This state-sanctioned advantage was then supercharged in the lawless frontier of social media. Here, the government’s innovation was breathtaking in its audacity. The report reveals that the Department of Public Information and various ministries became official retweet machines for the PPP/C, misusing administrative resources and reach to broadcast identical campaign content.

The party and its anonymous affiliates dominated paid political advertising, with two-thirds of pro-PPP/C ads on Meta platforms coming from untraceable accounts.  This created a digital hall of mirrors where the state, the party, and a legion of shadowy online actors all chanted the same message. The discourse was further poisoned by a coordinated campaign of manipulative and outright false content, including AI-generated videos, and the weaponization of citizens’ personal data, with cash grant recipients reporting unsolicited calls soliciting their vote.

The PPP/C’s anticipated unhappiness with this report is not anger at the accusation, but fury at the embarrassment. The EU EOM has held up a mirror to Guyana’s democracy, and the reflection is of a government that dare not compete on an open field, a party that must use the state as a crutch and a cudgel.

The PPPC will not be happy because the report, in its calm, methodical way, has called their bluff. It has documented the architecture of their advantage, and in doing so, has proven that their greatest fear is not losing an election, but having to face a truly fair one.

(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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• European Union Election Observer Mission, Freedom House, Peeping Tom, PPP/C, tantrum, truth

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