Parliament is a disgrace

Feb 07, 2026 Letters

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Dear Editor,

What transpired in the National Assembly this week and previously on November 3, during the swearing-in of Opposition Members before the nation and before their God, was not politics by any credible or honourable measure. It was a spectacle of institutional debasement, a profound dereliction of parliamentary decorum, and an affront to the civic intelligence of the Guyanese people.

This was not adversarial debate, nor was it spirited political contestation. What do they call it? Ah political theatre. No, it was coarsened theatrics, bordering on moral vandalism, carried out by Members of the People’s Progressive Party, among them individuals who routinely cloak themselves in the language of progress, justice, and gender advocacy, including senior female Members.

I will not retreat into euphemism, because euphemism is the accomplice of misconduct.

The conduct of Ministers Gail Teixeira, Dr. Vindhya Persaud, Sonia Parag, Oneidge Waldron, and other female Members of Parliament constituted a lamentable abdication of responsibility. For those who assert legal acumen, impartial judgment, or ethical authority, this behaviour was especially egregious.

The conduct of the Minister of Home Affairs was particularly concerning, given that she is currently involved in a court matter against the Opposition Leader. In such circumstances, one would reasonably expect restraint, or at the very least, the careful observance of impartiality. She failed even that basic standard. Instead, she repeatedly and openly engaged in heckling and ridicule against the Opposition Leader, rendering any claim to neutrality untenable and her bias unmistakable.

Minister Waldron, one cannot credibly profess neutrality while actively participating in derision, calumny, and orchestrated disparagement of the Opposition Leader. Take note.

As for Priya Manickchand, her posture was neither anomalous nor unexpected; it was entirely consonant with a longstanding pattern of intemperance.  What unfolded during the Budget Debates was not parliamentary discourse in the least. Sanctioned disorder by the Speaker unsurprisingly included a torrent of innuendo, vulgarity, and defamatory insinuations, including flippant references to RAPE, DV, and abuse against women. These are most alarming to me personally. It was disturbing to sit and watch senior and older government Members, women included, responding with levity, amusement, and open laughter to such dangerous insinuations.

To Minister Dr. Vindhya Persaud, entrusted with Human Services in a nation afflicted by one of the highest suicide rates globally, and scarred by the murder of 35 women through intimate partner violence in the past two years: sexual violence is not comedic fodder. Domestic abuse is not rhetorical sport!!! These are existential crises, and to trivialize them is a form of moral negligence. On that note, when will you declare this a national emergency in our country!?

To Sonia Parag, is it a source of mirth that over 8,000 cases of child abuse have been recorded in the last two years? When the systemic victimization of Indigenous women in the hinterland was raised, your inability or unwillingness to engage suggested not ignorance, but moral detachment. One is compelled to ask whether genuine representation for the children of Guyana is your purpose in the Assembly.

Most alarming of all was the utterance of language that amounted to a sexualized threat against a WIN Member of Parliament. In a country ravaged by rape, femicide, and normalized violence, such language is dangerously corrosive. Who, precisely, is expected to treat these matters with seriousness when they are debased in the nation’s most supreme legislative chamber? The Speaker’s acquiescence to even this invites an unavoidable question: has the Assembly been reduced to a theatre where impunity masquerades as free expression?

Compounding this disgrace is the deliberate secrecy imposed by a media blackout, sustained through antiquated and indefensible prohibitions within the Chamber and the allowance of only state media to spin the narratives of the governing PPP. This is the nation’s Budget, not the PPP budget. A legislature that recoils from transparency has already forfeited its claim to moral legitimacy. Let the press in!

Given all of this, one fact remains incontestable. WIN Parliamentarians alone yesterday demonstrated composure, restraint, and civic maturity throughout this circus. It is nothing short of astonishing that Members boasting two, three, even four decades of parliamentary tenure, many venerating their own experience, exhibited such a profound atrophy of judgment that none could have summoned the resolve to restrain their colleagues and utter the simplest rebuke: Enough.

But the public is not deceived. The people are observant. Memory is long. Guyana is hemorrhaging from violence, abuse, despair, and institutional decay. And its citizens deserve leaders who elevate the Republic and not drag its highest institutions into ignominy. The Guyanese people truly do deserve better. And if all of this was yesterday, the trajectory for today and the remaining weeks of Budget is deeply foreboding.

Enough

Sincerely,

Hana K. Mohamed

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• disgrace, Hana Mohamed., Letters, Opposition members, Parliament

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