WIN is losing

Sep 22, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – There are many things Guyana has acquired since the discovery of oil, including wealth, multi-storied buildings, newly built apartments that will remain empty, traffic jams and the sudden appearance of people who have always known how to spend money they never previously had. But one thing remains stubbornly underdeveloped: the political opposition. We have an Opposition, certainly, but having an Opposition and having an effective opposition are two different things, rather like having a gym membership and actually going to the gym.

The Opposition’s is supposed to scrutinise the Government, expose its failures, challenge its policies and offer the electorate an alternative vision of the country. In Guyana, however, the Opposition sometimes seems to believe that its principal responsibility is to remind the population that the Government is terrible.

The Government does not need to be told every morning that it is wrong, because governments are generally quite capable of discovering this themselves, usually several years after everybody else has noticed. What the country needs is an Opposition capable of explaining not merely what the Government is doing badly, but what it would do differently, how much it would cost and why anybody should trust it with the keys to the Treasury.

This becomes especially important in an oil-rich Guyana, where politics is no longer about arguing over a relatively small national pie but about deciding what to do with an enormous one. The Opposition should therefore be discussing the future of the Natural Resource Fund, the management of oil revenues, education, healthcare, electricity, poverty, productivity, agriculture, public-sector reform and the frightening possibility that Guyana could become a very rich country populated by people who remain mysteriously poor.

Instead, too much political energy is consumed by personalities, accusations, counter-accusations and the sort of political theatre in which everybody appears to be outraged while the public sits at home wondering whether somebody could please fix the electricity. There is nothing wrong with political combat, but if politics becomes entirely combat and contains no policy, eventually the electorate begins to feel like the referee at a boxing match in which neither fighter wants to throw punches.

The Government, of course, has no reason to complain about this situation. An ineffective Opposition is one of the greatest gifts a government can receive, particularly a government with money, political organisation and a talent for turning every new road, school and hospital into evidence that civilisation began on the day it took office.

The Opposition should be making the Government uncomfortable, not merely angry. There is a difference, because anger produces press conferences  and social media statements while discomfort produces answers, documents, investigations and occasionally resignations.

This is particularly true when allegations arise concerning corruption, overpriced contracts, conflicts of interest or the possible misuse of state agencies. The Opposition should not simply shout that corruption exists; it should properly investigate, produce evidence, ask precise questions and pursue the matter until the Government has nowhere left to hide except behind another committee. Not like what is being done now where allegations are being thrown but based on suspicion , inferences and innuendos.

Nor should the Opposition allow the Government to define the national conversation entirely through infrastructure. Roads, bridges, hospitals, schools and housing are important, but a country is not a construction site with a flag attached to it. The Opposition must ask who can afford to pay rent in this economy, whether the schools are producing educated citizens, whether the hospitals have enough staff and whether the electricity network can actually power the modern economy being advertised.

The Opposition also needs to resist the temptation to behave as though every Guyanese who supports the Government has been hypnotised. People support governments for many reasons, including because they genuinely believe their lives have improved, and telling those people that they have been deceived is not a particularly effective method of winning their votes.

What Guyana needs is an Opposition that respects the intelligence of the electorate. It should be able to say, “The Government did this well, but it failed here,” because credibility is built not by opposing everything but by demonstrating that one can distinguish between achievement and failure.

The Opposition must also become less obsessed with personalities and more interested in institutions. Guyana does not need another political Messiah who promises to rescue the republic while simultaneously explaining why everyone else is incompetent; it needs people capable of building institutions that will function even when their favourite politician is having a bad day.

The great irony is that the Government may actually benefit from a stronger Opposition. A serious Opposition would force it to improve its arguments, tighten its policies, investigate misconduct more aggressively and become more accountable, which means that the Opposition’s job is not merely to defeat the Government but to make government better.

So perhaps the question is not whether Guyana has an Opposition, because clearly it does. The question is whether Guyana has an Opposition capable of convincing the electorate that if given the opportunity, it could actually govern—and in a country awash with oil money, that may be the most important opposition question of all.

(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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• losing, oil, Peeping Tom, political opposition, win

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