Looking ahead to 2026

As a new year beckons, it is important that we appreciate the context created in the last year that created the platform from which we will enter that new year. Actions sundered from their contexts are meaningless and allow demagogues to create nihilistic narratives. The most important event that shaped our present context is the September 1 General and Regional Elections, where the PPP/C won a clear majority of 36 seats in our 65-seat National Assembly and eight out of ten Regional Councils. The former was a solid increase from their previous 33 seats in the 2020 elections and was a performative acclamation of their announced strategy to court African Guyanese voters that had traditionally shied away.
By now, all of the external election observers have issued their reports, and even though the major theme of the then major opposition parties was that procedural and technical aspects of the electoral process lent themselves to the PPP/C manipulating the results to their advantage, not a single report mentioned this occurring. This, then, gives the Government solid legitimacy for implementing the programme detailed in their manifesto in the next five years. We cannot stress this fact enough.
Having lost their major test for questioning the Government’s legitimacy, the Opposition has now jumped on a new limb created by the EU Observer Mission that claimed the Government’s incumbency offered it unfair advantages. This charge, however, seeks an ideal that no Government in the real world has ever achieved. By definition, Governments have to continue performing their tasks until and including Election Day, and if this, for instance, gives them greater visibility and even credit, this is unavoidable. To address this charge, only one Government in the world – Madagascar, which is not in Europe – has mandated that the incumbent President must resign 60 days before an election.
The elections saw the PNC/APNU – the second party in our traditional two-party parliamentary system – decimated from the 31 seats it had secured in 2020 in coalition with the AFC to a mere 12 seats. The AFC ran separately and was completely blanked, while an ex-PNC leader who ran separately secured one seat. The surprise was a new party, WIN, that was able to secure 16 seats – drawn almost completely from disaffected voters from the PNC’s traditional camp. Their victory, therefore, is due more to dissatisfaction with the PNC’s leadership’s track record and vision than with any inherent alternative programme.
Their victory is also due to the PPP/C’s studied programme and performance to change the ethnic/racial narrative that has shaped Guyanese political behaviour for the past six decades. This was achieved through their disavowal of negative messaging on the issue and their cross-ethnic developmental programmes. WIN’s support did come also from substantial Amerindian votes along with a smattering from the Indian constituency. We can therefore expect that the programmes and initiatives by the PPP/C that produced the non-ethnic/racial voting behaviour in 2025 will not only continue in 2026 and beyond but will be accelerated.
At the moment, the unfortunate manoeuvres by the leader of WIN to avoid being extradited to the US to face the 11 criminal indictments he and his father face have created a distraction from matters of national import. Seeing that he has insisted he is innocent, the WIN leader should have appointed an interim leader of his party forthwith and let justice take its course from the ruling by Magistrate Judy Latchman that will be delivered on January 6. It is unfortunate that – anticipating a ruling that the extradition request complies with all legal requirements – the WIN leader has pre-emptively challenged the law on which our extradition proceedings in the High Court are based.
By placing his personal desire to avoid possible extradition over his new responsibilities to our national interests that will be debated in the National Assembly, the WIN leader displays a profound lack of patriotism. But it is said, “Time is longer than wine,” and we expect that our country’s development will not suffer from this unseemly distraction too far into 2026.