By Roysdale Forde S.C- In Guyana’s democratic polity, the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) Final Report on the September 1, 2025, General and Regional Elections stands as a pivotal juridical and political instrument, invoking the imperatives of international electoral standards enshrined in covenants such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the American Convention on Human Rights. Rendered public on November 17, 2025, by Chief Observer Robert Biedroń, the report delineates a bifurcated electoral landscape: one of commendable procedural efficacy juxtaposed against systemic asymmetries that erode the principle of a level playing field.
This analysis, framed within the language of constitutional governance and participatory democracy, interrogates the report’s findings, critiques the incumbent People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) administration’s rejoinder – epitomised by President Irfaan Ali’s recent address – and underscores the imperative for electoral fortification. Drawing upon the sagacious exhortations of internationally venerated activists Nelson Mandela and Rigoberta Menchú, it posits that true democratic sovereignty resides not in procedural ritual but in the equitable amplification of the subaltern voice, while advocating for the masses’ vigilant stewardship against the plunder of national patrimony.
The EU EOM’s comprehensive scrutiny, encompassing 50 observers across Guyana’s ten regions, affirms that the polls transpired in “conditions of peace” with the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) administering voting and counting “efficiently.” However, the report indicts the electoral matrix for its “uneven playing field,” wherein the “undue advantages of incumbency” were systematically exploited by the PPP/C, contravening Guyana’s constitutional mandate under Article 9 for free and fair elections and international benchmarks for impartiality.
In 29% of observed PPP/C campaign events, state apparatuses – vehicles, infrastructure unveilings, and social disbursements – were conscripted for partisan ends, including voter transport in Regions 2 and 9. This is a particularly serious observation in extant circumstances where more than 48% of the population live in poverty, depend on public assistance and remain vulnerable to manipulations by political and other actors.
This fusion of executive prerogative with electoral advocacy, the mission avers, engendered voter intimidation, with reports of beneficiaries of cash grants and public employment desisting from oppositional expression lest they forfeit entitlements. Compounding this, the media ecosystem – vibrant yet “highly polariSed” – tilted asymmetrically toward the incumbents, with state broadcasters like NCN TV allocating 98% of prime-time coverage to PPP/C rallies, while the Guyana National Broadcasting Authority (GNBA), dominated by ruling party appointees, adjudicated compliance in opaque proceedings. Meanwhile, the digital realm devolved into a cauldron of “manipulative content,” where pro-PPP/C actors doxed critics and mobilised state-harvested personal data for political solicitations, flouting the nascent Data Protection Act.
These lacunae – unregulated campaign financing, the politicisation of state largesse, and deficient safeguards against voter coercion – betoken a polity where democratic form occludes substantive equity. As Nelson Mandela, the architect of post-apartheid reconciliation and Nobel laureate, admonished in his 1994 inaugural address: “It is the beginning of a new era. We have moved from an era of pessimism, division, limited opportunities, turmoil and conflict. We are starting a new era of hope, reconciliation and nation building.” Guyana’s 2025 ballot, while peaceful, risks entrenching such “division” absent redress, transforming elections from instruments of collective will into conclaves of elite entrenchment.
Echoing this, Rigoberta Menchú, the Guatemalan indigenous rights vanguard and 1992 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, whose testimony galvanised global scrutiny of electoral oppression, intoned: “I am like a drop of water on a rock. After drip, drip, dripping in the same place, I begin to leave a mark, and I leave my mark in many people’s hearts.” Menchú’s metaphor illuminates the report’s call for incremental yet inexorable reforms: enacting campaign finance statutes, insulating GNBA from partisan capture, and criminalising the instrumentalisation of personal data, thereby etching democratic resilience into Guyana’s institutional bedrock.
However, President Irfaan Ali’s November 19, 2025, address – framed as a “media report” to the nation – manifests a posture of defiant exceptionalism, emblematic of the PPP/C’s putative disdain for “rational and reasonable assessment.” Dismissing the report as “subjective, partisan, completely biased” and bereft of “substantive analysis,” elides its evidentiary rigour, attributing critiques to oppositional grievances rather than empirical observation. He reframes (subtly but not wisely) the commissioning of hospitals, roads, and social grants – timed proximal to the polls – as manifesto fulfillments, not electoral inducements, insisting: “That is not an incumbency advantage.
That is a commitment… like any other country in the European Union.” Such casuistry obfuscates the report’s documentation of these acts’ promotional integration into PPP/C rallies, contravening prohibitions on state resource co-optation under the Elections Laws (Amendment) Act. Ali’s brush-off of data misuse – “We have a responsibility to speak about our success” – exposes a juridical myopia, wherein executive fiat supersedes accountability, eroding the social contract’s mutuality.
This retort, while acknowledging electoral peace, repudiates the report’s diagnostic depth, perpetuating a narrative of unassailable governance that Mandela decried as antithetical to democracy: “Since we have achieved our freedom, there can only be one division amongst us: between those who cherish democracy and those who do not.” The PPP/C’s comportment intimates a regime wherein power’s gravitational pull distorts the electoral orbit, demanding judicial intervention to enforce transparency.
To buttress Guyana’s national electoral process, the report proffers a blueprint for constitutional and statutory emendation. Paramount is the promulgation of campaign finance legislation, delineating permissible state expenditures and mandating disclosures to preclude the alchemy of public fisc into partisan gold. Operationalising the Data Protection Act through an autonomous commissioner would shield voter registries from electoral predation, aligning with Menchú’s advocacy for human rights as inviolable bulwarks: “The human being is to be respected and defended, not protected like a bird or a river.”
Reforming GNBA’s composition through bipartisan vetting and mandating equitable airtime as per the Broadcasting Act’s dormant equity clause – would depoliticise the infosphere, fostering Menchú-esque persistence in civic discourse. GECOM’s augmentation with independent auditors for result tabulation, coupled with voter education on coercion’s illegality, would engender prophylactic equity. These measures, if legislated by mid-2026, could transmute Guyana’s polls from polarised spectacles into exemplars of inclusive sovereignty, honoring Mandela’s vision of democracy as “equal political rights” unmarred by perpetual disabilities.
Still, institutional panaceas falter sans the demos’ mobilisation. The report’s revelations of resource abuse – oil windfalls funneled into vote-buying amid Guyana’s burgeoning petro-wealth – underscore the masses’ cardinal duty to contest such depredations. As stewards of the res publica, citizens must amplify voices through civil society coalitions, petitioning the High Court for declaratory relief against malfeasance and invoking Article 138’s justiciability of fundamental rights.
Grassroots vigils, similar to Menchú’s indigenous assemblies, and digital campaigns exposing fiscal opacity can galvanise accountability, transforming passive electorates into active sentinels. In a polity where national resources, hydrocarbons, bauxite, biodiversity, constitute intergenerational patrimony, popular effervescence against their electoral perversion is not mere protest but constitutional imperative, ensuring that democracy’s dividends accrue to the polity, not the palace.
In sum, the EU EOM report, though imperfect, serves as a clarion for Guyana’s democratic maturation, unmasking incumbency’s corrosive tilt while charting ameliorative vectors. President Ali’s peremptory dismissal, reflective of PPP/C hubris, imperils this trajectory, but, the polity’s resilience, echoed in Mandela’s reconciliatory ethos and Menchú’s indefatigable drip, beckons a renaissance. By heeding these, Guyana may forge an electoral architecture impervious to abuse, where the people’s voice, not the state’s shadow, reigns supreme. The onus is on all citizens: to drip, to mark, to build.
