Guyana’s Corruption Perception Index

Feb 15, 2026 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – Guyana has improved by a point on Transparency International’s (TI) 2025 Corruption Perception Index (CPI). Within the PPPC Government that single point movement may be celebrated as major progress. It is more than a 33% improvement when compared to this government’s own record that it left behind in 2015 when it was removed from office. The PPPC Government’s CPI score then was below 30, a number so dismal that it should disturb any citizen concerned about corruption and the tsunami of skullduggeries that damage confidence and rent at the fabric of governance. The point could be made, a valid one we think, that massive corruption within the ranks of the PPPC ten years ago led to it being booted out of office. Serious leaders who honestly care about corruption, who hate the blotches it leaves on attempts at clean governance, and the stains against their own names would be unsparing of corrupt acts and corrupt friends. It’s how they demonstrate that they are genuine about digging out corruption roots.

How genuine have the PPPC Government’s efforts been in its fight against corruption since returning to power in August 2020? Neither convincing nor trustworthy would be the response of many citizens. Without a doubt, there has been a steady flow of words about corruption, but lip service is what we interpret those words to be. A good portion of leaders in the government’s time and energies, their words about corruption, has been about attacking and seeking to deflect attention from themselves, and damaging others. Few are the Guyanese that are fooled, with many of the government’s own people shaking their heads at leaders and their distractions that do nothing to address the corruption scourge that eats away at Guyana’s vitality.

Here is a government that was in power for more than five years at the end of 2025, and the best that it managed compared to the record of its predecessor, the APNU+AFC Coalition, was to hold steady at the CPI level that the 2020 elections vanquished left. In its slightly shortened and dispute-plagued five years, the APNU+AFC Coalition could claim that its record speaks volumes about the authenticity of its efforts. In less than five years, the Coalition improved Guyana’s CPI showing from below that 30-point level that it inherited from the PPPC Government of 23 years, to 40. That’s where it more or less has hovered in the last five years since the PPPC’s return to the corridors of power, and control of the oil purse. We note that the Coalition managed that 10-point improvement, despite the shenanigans of some of its own corrupt people, who grabbed as much as they could in the then a nonoil economy.

PPPC Government leaders are offended when the issue of corruption is raised, and how it is perceived to be under their watch. It is the old truth of the messengers being victimised, when the message cannot be contested. It is approaching the half-year point since the government’s success at the September polls. The president’s second inaugural address also in September promised a dedicated anticorruption unit, which gave some guarded hope. Nothing has been seen or heard of that promise, which has potential to make a real difference in the fight against corruption. Corruption is so chronic and entrenched under the PPPC Government, and reaching to all levels of its machinery, that must be one nonnegotiable condition. Any anticorruption unit worth its presence must be made up of the best that Guyana has to offer. Loading up such a unit with PPPC cronies or hacks will doom its chances of delivering from the inception. In typical government fashion, more for the show and being able to sell that a presidential commitment was fulfilled, rather than possessing any substance that inspires.

TI’s CPI for Guyana for 2025 is reported at the 40-point mark. It is revealing that in a country with a government that thrives so much on secrecy, the corruption perception index could be so low as to be a national disgrace. A fair question is: what if the layers of secrecy were less, were penetrable, would Guyana’s corruption perception reading be? It certainly wouldn’t be better, when the worst is exposed.

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corruption, Editorial, Guyana’s Corruption Perception Index, PPPC Government, transparency international

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