Dynastic politics is repulsive to the electorate

Apr 21, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – In 2025, there was a seismic shift in Guyanese politics. For years the established parties assumed voters would remain in their accustomed enclosures, dutifully choosing between familiar flags, familiar slogans, and familiar disappointments. But then something happened last year. Roughly a quarter of the electorate looked at the local political menu, sighed deeply, and ordered takeout.

This is how more than 109,000 Guyanese came to cast ballots for a completely new party, We Invest In Nationhood (WIN). Now, in another society this might have been treated as a passing tantrum. But in Guyana it was a thunderclap. Voters do not casually hand six figures worth of support to newcomers. Even the AFC with the backing of the professional classes and the local middle class, did not enjoy such a massive support in their first electoral outlining

There was a seismic shift by the electorate in 2025, because whether rightly or wrongly, many had grown weary of the old establishments and their ritual of promising a difference while delivering the same old and tired politics. Part of the explanation lies in the condition of the then main PNCR, which at the time was fragmented, quarrelsome, and short of money. Political campaigns require organization, message discipline, and the sort of finances that permit you to print posters larger than postage stamps. Lacking these essentials, the opposition space was left open. Nature abhors a vacuum, and politics abhors one even more. Into that opening stepped WIN.

But WIN did not rise only because others stumbled. It rose because its leader was perceived by many ordinary Guyanese as a man who had done tangible things for poor people. In politics, ideology is nice, manifestos are decorative, but practical assistance has the persuasive power of revealed religion. If a man helps your village, pays your child’s school fees, builds a new house for you and helps small entrepreneurs start businesses, he becomes more credible than many citizens more credible than twenty policy papers.

Then there was the added drama the governing party’s visible hostility toward him. Nothing manufactures sympathy faster than official nastiness. It is one of the oldest laws in political life. If authorities appear obsessed with crushing a man, many in the lower classes instinctively wonder whether he must therefore be dangerous to the powerful, which immediately improves his market value. Persecution, or even the appearance of it, has always been excellent advertising.

Still, here is where history enters the room, clears its throat, and asks everyone to sit down. It would be a grave mistake for WIN—if anyone there entertains such fantasies, and I am not saying they do—to imagine that a movement built around one commanding personality can automatically establish a lasting dynasty in Guyana. Guyanese do not warm naturally to dynastic politics. We are suspicious people by temperament. We do not like to be told that leadership is hereditary. In other countries, surnames can function like passports to office. Here they often function like invitations to disdain.

Consider Forbes Burnham. Whatever else may be said of him, he understood political reality. He knew he could not simply groom a relative or an in-law to succeed him. He never attempted it. Cheddi Jagan likewise did not treat Guyana as family property. His wife Janet Jagan eventually led the country, yes—but she did so on the basis of long years of political sacrifice, activism, struggle and service. She was not an heirloom; she was a veteran. She earned her stripes many times over. Even the present ruling elite, oligarchic as critics may consider it, seems shrewd enough to avoid openly selling dynastic succession. It may prefer candidates of its own choosing, selected in rooms with curtains drawn but it understands that naked family inheritance would offend the electorate. This is the strategic dilemma confronting WIN. Its leader may possess appeal, resources, loyalty, and that rare political gift of commanding attention. But political movements centered on one person always face the same question: what happens when the one person exits the stage? There must be a second act.

Can WIN produce a successor with equivalent appeal? Can it find someone who attracts votes independently? Can that person also command organizational muscle and financial resources? These are not minor details. They are the difference between becoming an institution and becoming a footnote. From all available appearances, WIN’s leader may prove a one-election wonder—an extraordinary moment rather than a durable era. Unless the party develops broader structures, deeper bench strength, and a charismatic heir who is accepted on merit rather than bloodline, it risks fading rapidly, extradition or no extradition.

Guyana’s voters can be romantic, but they are not sentimental for long. They may embrace a rebel in one season and abandon him in the next. They are willing to gamble on outsiders, but not to crown dynasties. And in that stubborn refusal lies one of the healthier instincts of our republic.

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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• Dynastic, electorate, Guyanese politics, Peeping Tom, Politics

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