Elections and media coverage

Nov 29, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

(Kaieteur News) – Thanks to SN’s Nov 26, 2025, semi-centerfold labeled, “EU observers report underlining vast PPP/C advantage in media coverage”, Guyanese are able to view for themselves what that caption indicates.  I didn’t need to look at the two bar charts and one table from the EU.  Nor watch NCN.

Nor read the state-controlled newspaper.  Nor connect to the PPP beholden private media paper.  There was no need to engage in any such action to be informed of the pronounced bias towards the incumbents.  That wasn’t merely electoral; it is cultural and been permanent.  The EU only dug up and displayed what has been close to the norm in Guyana out of the season of elections.  Still, editors, writers, readers, and watchers take offence when reality with which they disagree stares them unblinkingly in the face.

For full disclosure, I have not read nor looked at more than 30 minutes combined of all the names directly or indirectly mentioned above in the 10 plus years since I have been back.  There’s no use for porn.  I did look, however, at SN’s first bar graph and think that “vast PPP/C advantage in media coverage” must rank as an understatement.  One can barely identify on the graph the opposition’s presence.  What it says is that coverage featuring and favouring the PPP enjoyed exclusive status, almost monopoly power.

Skew or tilt doesn’t even come close to describing what should be more accurately called a full-size capsize to the PPP’s advantage, and to the detriment of the opposition, whether taken singly or in combination.  It is why the president’s reaction to the EU report was found to be so spaced out, so unrelated to what took place on the ground.  I had taken the position to clear the air, and lend credence or condemnation to the president’s posture, let a review be done of the state media, and let the numbers speak for themselves.  It should be easy, and the EU (or SN) did just that, and can say: take a look, and then, so what’s the beef?  I take a quieter route.  When the circumstances are so overwhelming, it is time to concede that ground, move on, and grow.

In looking at the SN article and its embedded supporting details, a picture emerged of what was stark; sinister is what could also be said.  For all those hours logged can represent nothing but mutilating the minds of simple Guyanese, through unceasing cascades of government sponsored propaganda.  All that advantageous airtime, all those glowing column spaces, and all those coerced or cooperating contingents of foreign voters, and the PPP’s electoral success harvested was some 9,000 more votes this time compared to the last.

Remove the tally of foreign voters, and where would the PPP be?  I don’t think that it would have been in the loser’s line, because the group knew how much of a voter shortfall had to be made up to negate the demographic deficit.  Because the PNC did so poorly, the PPP’s margin of victory looks so swollen.  Commendably, SN and KN pointed the way on fair, balanced coverage.  Surprisingly, Kaieteur Radio led the way with incumbency airtime.  It’s the magic of the times.

Recent developments have emphasized that it could be a decision from the judiciary, or a report from foreign elections observer missions, and the PPP has two standard reactions.  First, it’s being victimized again.  And two, somebody, some group, even some invited foreign platoon, has it in for the ruling party.  I urge holding in abeyance misuse of State assets for unfair incumbency advantage.  I recommend separating from campaign financing, and who gave how much to whom, both long before the elections, and around the elections.

I exhort all to focus on the State media advantage of the incumbent, and how it was almost the equivalent of a one-party show, as well as one that was measurable.  SN said there was “vast…advantage.”  I stick to exclusive rights, monopoly power, and capsizing what democracy is supposed to be about.

When one set of voices is saying the same thing at the same time, and then over and over later, there is difficulty in the extreme to call such a creature democracy.  When one political group is all that was heard from the organs of the State, and related friendlies, then that is more like the democracy claimed by the Democratic Republic of North Korea.  Is Pres. Ali still nursing objection, anger?  I think those are all part of his tendency to panic, hyperbolic, and the slick.  Now, it is forward until the next elections.

(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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• Elections, EU observers, GHK Lall, media coverage, PPP/C

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