APNU targets Afro-Guyanese critics in disparaging tirade at Bareroot rally

The A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) continued its campaign of disparaging remarks directed at former members, supporters, and segments of the Afro-Guyanese community for not swearing blind loyalty to the party at a recent public meeting held in Bareroot, East Coast Demerara, on Sunday night.
APNU newcomer Eden Corbin and Working People’s Alliance (WPA) executive member David Hinds led a scathing verbal assault against a number of former party executives, including attorney James Bond, former Region 10 Chairman Jermaine Figueira, and former Member of Parliament Amanza Walton-Desir, all of whom have since broken ranks with the APNU.

Both Bond and Figueira have since both publicly come out in support of the ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP), while Walton-Desir has started her own party, the Forward Guyana Movement (FGM), one of six parties contesting the upcoming September 1 elections.
Corbin, who was recently introduced as a new face of the coalition, openly ridiculed the former members, calling them “stupid”, “clowns”, and “cochores” – the latter being a derogatory Guyanese slang implying betrayal or sell-out behaviour. Corbin was particularly aggrieved by the negative attention that the APNU has been receiving about the party’s inability to draw large gatherings of supporters to its meetings and rally. He also accused them of prioritising crowd sizes at rallies over the lived economic realities facing Guyanese citizens.
“The cochores that are around here are talking about crowd, crowd, and crowd. Do you see the state of this country and have the audacity to worry about how many people attend the rally?” Corbin said to the crowd. “Their priorities are wrong.”
He singled out Bond and Figueira, both of whom have been campaigning for the PPP, accusing them of working along with “…murderers and killers and people who have denigrated this economy. The problem with the PPP is that they think everyone on this side is as stupid as James.”
Attacking Walton-Desir, Corbin questioned the speed with which she launched her new party after her resignation from APNU’s main faction, the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR).
Walton-Desir has been at odds with APNU since last year when she sought to contend against Aubrey Norton for the leadership of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR), which is the biggest party in the APNU coalition. Norton was elected unopposed for the PNCR leadership after all of his contenders withdrew from the race, citing irregularities and lack of transparency in the process.
Earlier this year Walton-Desir officially resigned from the PNCR entirely and founded the FGM. FGM will be contesting in seven regions at the General and Regional Elections.

Racialised messaging
Taking the stage after Corbin, Hinds, known for his controversial and inflammatory public commentary, applauded Corbin’s remarks and furthered the attacks with racialised messaging, reinforcing the narrative that Afro-Guyanese citizens should demonstrate unwavering loyalty to the APNU, which has historically had a majority Afro-Guyanese base.
“When I listen to the young man just now, I want to retire. I’m gonna kick back because I know the future is in good hands,” Hinds remarked.
In his speech, Hinds reiterated a divisive collectivist message, arguing that individual dissent within the Afro-Guyanese community undermines their historical struggle.
“They told us not to think as a collective… But when our ancestors took money, they didn’t just take individual money. They poured money together in a wheelbarrow and bought land. Whenever we have won anything big, we have won it as a collective,” he said.
Hinds, no stranger to controversy, has previously come under fire for using racially charged slurs against both Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese critics of the APNU. In February 2025, Hinds, during his “Politics 101” programme, hurled a series of insults at Afro-Guyanese, calling them “lick bottoms”, “house slaves”, and “sell-outs”, among others. Also, earlier this year, he called former PNCR executive Geeta Chandan-Edmond a “slave catcher” and accused Indo-Guyanese former PNCR Regional Chairman Daniel Seeram of benefitting from ethnic favouritism.
“Here’s an Indian man rewarded by the votes of Africans,” Hinds said at the time. “When you’re an Indian, you rise up quickly in the Black party – at the expense of some Black members.”
Hinds said on Sunday that his message was primarily directed at Afro-Guyanese who he claims have lost faith in the APNU. Acknowledging growing disenchantment over the party’s tenure in Government from 2015 to 2020, he claimed that accomplishments made during that period went unrecognised simply due to poor communication.
“We hear some of our young people say that ‘when the APNU was in Government, they didn’t do anything for us.’ Now those young people are not stupid; they didn’t know that APNU did things for us. But what they are talking about is that as young Black people we did not go to them and say, “We are doing this for you as public servants; we are doing this for you as African Guyanese,” Hinds said.

Snub Code of Conduct
APNU, led by Aubrey Norton, was one of two parties notably absent on Tuesday from the Ethnic Relations Commission’s (ERC) Code of Conduct signing ceremony for political parties contesting the upcoming General and Regional Elections on September 1.
This marks the second consecutive election that APNU has refused to sign the Code. In 2023, the party also abstained from signing the ERC’s Code of Conduct for the Local Government Elections held that year.
Meanwhile, Hinds also reiterated APNU’s claim that the 2020 elections were rigged by the PPP, warning the current administration that any repeat in the upcoming September 1 elections would not be tolerated. However, the 2020 election results were declared by the Guyana Elections Commission. A national recount supervised by a CARICOM delegation revealed that the PPP had actually secured 233,336 votes, defeating the APNU+AFC’s 217,920. The recount ultimately led to the swearing-in of President Irfaan Ali on August 2, 2020.
Several persons, including former Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) CEO Keith Lowenfield and former DCEO Roxanne Myers, along with former Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo, have been charged with conspiracy to commit electoral fraud in favour of the APNU+AFC coalition. Also charged are former PNCR Chairperson Volda Lawrence, PNCR activist Carol Smith-Joseph and GECOM employees Sheffern February, Enrique Livan, Michelle Miller and Denise Babb-Cummings.