Dear Editor,
In the politics of spectacle, visual imagery is everything. A clean road, a freshly painted market, a new banner along a busy thoroughfare can be more persuasive than a hundred policy speeches. Guyana’s rulers know this. And now, with the government’s sudden takeover of 22 major streets in Georgetown, what appears at first sight as an administrative reshuffle is in fact a carefully staged political operation—crafted to rewrite the city’s image, reframe the narrative, and reposition the ruling party as the sole author of Georgetown’s “modernization.”
This is not governance.
This is political theatre dressed in the language of the Roads Act.
A City Divided in Two Frames
The first frame is one of order: freshly repaired surfaces, new parapets, and newly branded “public roads” under the Ministry of Public Works. The second frame is one of decay: uncollected garbage, potholed streets, bickering councillors, and an over‑burdened City Hall that seems incapable of controlling its own city.
The people of Georgetown are being asked, through this visual contrast, to draw a simple conclusion: only the central government can fix the capital.
But the truth is the opposite. The government is not “fixing” the city; it is curating who gets credit for fixing it.
By taking over the most trafficked corridors—Vlissengen, Regent, Camp, Robb, Lamaha, Eastern Highway, America Street, New Market, Middle Street, and others—the PPP‑C is seizing the very arteries that residents see every day on their way to work, to school, to the markets. These are not just streets; they are the city’s postcards. And the government is now the photographer choosing the light, the angle, and the caption.
Starving the Council to Silence Its Voice
What makes this move so sinister is what lies behind the photo‑op: the systematic disempowerment of the Georgetown Mayor and City Council. By arbitrarily reclassifying these 22 roads as “public roads,” the government has wrested from the council its authority over traffic regulation, maintenance, and, crucially, revenue generation.
No more permits for parapet billboards.
No more permits for roadside festivals.
No more control over vendor spaces along these prime commercial routes.
All that will now flow through the Ministry of Public Works—or, more precisely, through the ruling party’s network of favoured contractors, advertisers, and fundraisers.
In effect, the council is being starved of the very income it needs to service its constituency, while part of that diverted revenue will inevitably find its way into the coffers of the party that now controls the new “public roads.”
If some of that money ultimately funds the ruling party’s campaign in the upcoming local elections, the irony is not lost: the government is using the council’s own potential revenue stream to campaign against the very institution it claims to be “rescuing.”
The Machiavellian Chessboard
This is classical Machiavellian politics: control the optics, hollow out the opponent, and then present yourself as the only rational solution.
Machiavelli did not invent the idea that power is not only exercised through law, but through perception.
Today, the PPP‑C is using that same playbook on Georgetown:
- Step one: Take control of the most visible assets—markets, streets, and soon perhaps even waste and sanitation contracts—so that the public eye rests on the government’s brand, not the council’s.
- Step two: Create a narrative of “failure” and “inefficiency” around City Hall, even as the central government withholds resources, delays payments, and sidelines the elected local authority.
- Step three: Use the resulting visual contrast—government‑branded cleanliness versus council‑branded neglect—to build a campaign platform that appears self‑evident: “They cannot fix Georgetown; we can.”
The genius of this strategy is that it rarely needs to be spoken aloud. The image does the talking. The clean road whispers, “PPP‑C works.” The unfinished drainage canal screams, “local government is corrupt.”
The Black Box Behind the Banners
The government speaks of modernizing the capital; the Minister of Public Works speaks of “necessary administrative interventions.” But the real administration at work here is not bureaucratic. It is political.
Inside the black box of this operation, a series of quiet decisions are being made:
- Which roads are deemed “public” and which remain “council.”
- Which markets are reconstructed and which are left to decay.
- Which contractors are awarded contracts and which are left out.
- Which billboards are approved, whose brands are elevated, and whose messages are buried.
These decisions are not neutral. They are vectors of power, patronage, and messaging. And because they are made unilaterally, without consultation, without transparency, and without democratic accountability at the local level, they are exactly the kind of executive fiat that erodes local self‑government.
Citizens Are Not Blind: They Are Being Misinformed
Many citizens are not fooled by the surface. They are simply left without a clear explanation for what is truly happening.
Why take over 22 streets with no notice?
Why bypass the elected Mayor and City Council?
Why reclassify council roads as public roads when the law already vests clear authority in the municipality?
The answer the government does not want you to connect is simple: central control over the city’s most visible spaces is a pre‑election strategy.
It is about shaping the environment in which the next local elections will be fought. It is about making the PPP‑C look like the only competent manager of Georgetown, even as the same government prevents the council from being the kind of effective local authority it could be.
A Call to Moral and Ethical Clarity
This writer has always stood on the principle that power must be used to serve, not to subvert. We believe that local government is not a fiefdom to be raided, but a constitutional institution to be respected.
This ruling party’s move is not a “modernization” of Georgetown; it is a modernization of authoritarianism—a refined, image‑sensitive form of central control that trades on the currency of visual contrast.
We therefore call on:
- Citizens to see beyond the fresh paint and the shiny new parapets, and ask: Who benefits? Who loses? Who decided this without my voice being heard?
- The Opposition and civil society to treat this as a constitutional and democratic crisis, not a mere administrative dispute.
- The Ruling Party and the Executive to open the black box: explain the legal and developmental rationale transparently, involve Georgetown’s elected council in any plan, and halt the unilateral stripping of municipal authority until there is full, public debate.
The people of Georgetown deserve more than a stage‑managed narrative of their own city.
They deserve truth, accountability, and the dignity of local self‑government.
If the PPP‑C continues to use Georgetown’s streets as its own campaign stage, it will be remembered not as the party that modernized the capital, but as the party that instrumentalized the city for power. And that, in the end, is the most dangerous kind of modernization.
Regards
Hemdutt Kumar
