Guyana’s Opposition And The Fight For Democratic Accountability

By M. Shabeer Zafar

News Americas, TORONTO, Canada, Thurs. June 11, 2026: Guyana possesses oil wealth that most countries would envy. Corruption index score: 41 out of 100; 135th globally in economic freedom; net migration rate is minus 8 per thousand annually – people are physically choosing to leave rather than endure a system that extracts national wealth and concentrates it among the politically connected. In Regions 1, 6, 7, and 10, communities wait for roads, schools, water, ambulances, and electricity that Georgetown takes for granted. Children in Region 7 stop schooling after primary level because government decisions about who matters have made secondary education structurally inaccessible.

This is policy. Single-party dominance without genuine coalition accountability in a nation whose Constitution demands something categorically better. Region 10, home to 65,000 Guyanese, still has no Regional Chair. That is deliberate denial of representation. When a regime controlling oil wealth blocks regions from meaningful participation, constitutional rights exist on paper alone and democracy begins its quiet death.

PNC

The People’s National Congress (PNC), which led Guyana for many decades, practiced this identical methodology, packing courts, police, and institutions along ethnic and class lines. The faces have changed. The pattern hasn’t. A constitutional principle that the current Parliament has placed under acute stress and that every Guyanese citizen must understand with clarity: the Speaker of the National Assembly isn’t a government appointee. The Speaker is the servant of the entire Parliament and the servant of the entire electorate.

The exclusion of Amanza Walton-Desir, MP, from parliamentary committee service is a constitutional violation. Walton-Desir represents the Forward Guyana Movement, the 3rd largest opposition party by parliamentary seat count, following the 2025 election. She holds evident professional qualifications. She holds a constitutional entitlement, identical to every other elected MP, to meaningful parliamentary participation, including committee service. Her exclusion on the basis that her party is new, small, or inconvenient to the administration’s parliamentary management strategy is constitutionally indefensible on every available ground.

The logic is elementary: Parliament exists to represent the electorate. Every citizen who voted for FGM is represented by Walton-Desir. Excluding her from committee service does not merely sideline one MP – it disenfranchises every Guyanese who placed their trust in that movement and every citizen whose democratic interest her committee participation would have served. Partisanship has no constitutional home in the Speaker’s chair. None. The moment a Speaker accommodates MPs whose cooperative disposition serves the administration while blocking MPs whose independence challenges it, the Speaker has ceased to be an officer of Parliament and become an instrument of executive control. That transformation is precisely what the 2026 comparative study documented in Tunisia, Turkey, and Venezuela as the procedural face of soft authoritarianism.

Mr. Norton, PNC’s leader, would serve the Opposition’s cause considerably better by directing his political science training toward building the coalition that displaces this administration rather than targeting WIN’s leader, Azruddin Mohamed. His target is misplaced.

Five minutes examining the current administration’s regional record reveals a government that has progressively lost clarity about who Guyana’s genuine allies are. The Essequibo question has been managed through the International Court of Justice’s jurisdiction and diplomatic passivity, without building the bilateral treaty architecture and American partnership that would make any eventual judgment enforceable. Regional policy increasingly reflects patronage network priorities over sovereign national interests.

WIN

Mohamed’s conduct stands in categorical contrast. In August 2025, with no executive power, he formed his Political Movement – WE INVEST IN NATIONHOOD, (WIN). He deliberately navigated obstructed hinterland routes to reach communities that the established parties had abandoned. He donates part of his parliamentary salary to those in need. He works 16-hour days. He defers publicly to his colleagues rather than seeking personal prominence. He has named specific governmental misconduct with documented evidence on at least 5 occasions in May and June 2026, identifying ministers whose corrupt lifestyles he has cataloged as Leader Of The Opposition while their fellow Guyanese stand in bread lines.

In law, behavior consistent with a declared principle across 13 months of unscripted public life meets the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Mohamed’s record runs from 26th May, 2025, to present. It can’t be manufactured for “silly season” (election time). It already exists and is the most reliable predictor of what his presidency would produce. One year old. Documented. Constitutionally coherent. Guyana’s future is on the ballot in 2030.

EDITOR’S NOTE: M. Shabeer Zafar is a Guyana-born, Canadian-based Barrister-at-Law.