The PPPC’s lost cause

Jan 25, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – I’m not a particularly political person. Actually, I’m hardly a person at all sometimes, at least not in the sense that people usually mean. But I have been following Guyanese politics the way some people follow serial killers. You can’t look away, even though you know it’s going to be messy, and probably involve a lot of screaming.

The latest spectacle involves the PPPC. They are reacting as though the end of the world is coming tomorrow. Why? Because AZMO, the Presidential candidate of the WIN party, is finally going to be elected Leader of the Opposition.

Finally. Tomorrow. It’s like watching someone realise that gravity exists, and then pretending that if they just sit very still, the laws of physics won’t apply.

The PPPC has, of course, tried desperately to stave off this eventuality. I mean, what else are you going to do when you’re facing something inevitable? They’ve not signaled any sitting of the Assembly for months now.

Months!  One imagines that they were hoping a court decision would miraculously appear to extradite the Mohameds, who, rumor has it, know all sorts of terrible secrets about the PPPC, including where they got the money to pay for the legal fees to fight to ensure that they were not cheated in the 2020 general and regional elections.

The irony, of course, is delicious, like food that has been sitting out for too long and you can’t decide whether to eat it or call the health inspector. Nothing AZMO can do inside the National Assembly will affect the PPPC’s stranglehold on government. They have a commanding majority.

The Opposition? Weak. So why, you may ask, is the PPPC so obsessed with preventing AZMO from assuming his rightful position? It’s like worrying that the postman will overthrow your household just because he delivered the wrong letter once.

The answer is that the PPPC has descended into a level of pettiness that is disturbing in its implications. They are, in the most technical sense, petty, pitiful, and puerile. It’s a trinity of dysfunction. Their narrative, recycled as if it were a vintage handbag, claims that the country’s reputation is at stake if AZMO is elected.

The country’s reputation! As if the entire world is sitting around sipping overpriced coffee, whispering, “Oh no! AZMO is Leader of the Opposition! What will Guyana do?” And of course, the PPPC’s sidekicks nod gravely, as if this were some kind of international conspiracy rather than a political inevitability that has been pending since, well, always.

There is speculation, of course, that the PPPC may be contemplating a last-minute gambit—something spectacularly dramatic, like trying to injunct the meeting of Opposition parliamentarians or claiming that AZMO’s nomination is null and void because of some technicality that only exists in their collective imagination. This would have to be done through proxy since the PPPC is not part of the meeting to elected the Leader of the Opposition. This is a meeting for the Opposition MPs only.

The grapevine says that certain foreign governments apparently have already signalled that such antics would not be entertained. This is reassuring, mostly because it suggests there is still a semblance of sanity in the world, though it is precarious.

One recalls the five-month impasse over the 2020 election results, when diplomats had to check with the military to ensure that no one would, in fact, attempt a coup in the middle of a crisis that should have ended months earlier. You have to admit, when diplomacy involves asking the military politely, “Will you do the right thing?” it does make you question the fundamentals of civilisation.

But with the PPPC, you can never tell. Which is part of the problem. At this point, they should lick their wounds, accept the inevitable, and perhaps consider therapy. Their obsession with preventing AZMO from becoming Leader of the Opposition is like a man trying to hold back a charging lion with a broom.

The battle they have been waging was never one they could win. It was a battle that, if it were a movie, would end with the protagonist sitting alone on a park bench, talking to pigeons about how unfair life is, while the actual world goes on around them.

The PPPC’s behaviour, to put it mildly, is a remarkable demonstration of the human capacity for overreaction. The rest of us can only watch, slightly horrified, slightly bemused, and wonder what other minor inevitabilities they will attempt to turn into existential crises.

Tomorrow, AZMO will be Leader of the Opposition, and the world, shockingly, will continue to exist. Unless the PPPC has somehow arranged for it to end. And I wouldn’t entirely rule that out.

(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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• AZMO, Peeping Tom, PPPC, WIN Party

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