The opposition in Guyana risks becoming what it professes to oppose—irrelevant to the very people it was elected to represent—and, more troublingly, appears content to be bullied and marginalised by the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) government.
For more than 80 days, Parliament has remained idle. This is not a procedural lapse; it is a constitutional breakdown. It denies citizens their rightful representation and halts the central forum through which the people’s business must be conducted.
During this period of inaction, opposition parliamentarians continue to receive salaries, benefits, and privileges—funded by the very taxpayers whose voices are effectively silenced. Representation is a duty. Right now, that duty is being neglected.
The dysfunction goes even deeper. There is no functioning Public Accounts Committee (PAC), no active sectoral committees, no meaningful oversight architecture to scrutinise government spending, policy, and conduct. These are essential bodies. Without them, billions move with limited scrutiny, decisions go unchallenged, and accountability weakens. In that vacuum, the government operates with fewer restraints.
At a time when concerns continue to grow about corruption, governance practices, and the erosion of democratic norms—including a widely noted decline in press freedom—this absence of opposition vigilance is not just disappointing; it is dangerous.
And yet, this is the same opposition that stood before workers at the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) May Day Rally and called for unity. They spoke of collaboration, of putting country before self, of confronting the excesses of the People’s Progressive Party government with a single voice.
But it was only words. Days later, there is no evidence of that unity. No structured engagement. No visible effort to bring the parliamentary opposition together in any serious, coordinated way. What remains instead is fragmentation, ego, and a troubling pattern of political self-interest masquerading as representation.
Those who sit on the opposition benches do so because citizens placed their trust in them to defend their interests. That mandate was not given to settle scores or pursue narrow agendas. Yet that is what the public is seeing—division where there should be cohesion, silence where there should be advocacy, absence where there should be presence.
Worse still, this prolonged dormancy of Parliament appears to have gone largely unchallenged until it was brought to public attention by this publication. That alone raises a fundamental question: how can an opposition fail to act while the central institution of democracy lies idle?
The opposition’s failure to organise, to act collectively, and to assert itself vigorously does more than weaken its own credibility—it strengthens the hand of the government. By default, by absence, by inaction, it creates space for unchecked governance.
Guyana is undergoing rapid transformation, driven by unprecedented economic growth. But growth without accountability, without inclusion, without strong institutions creates imbalance and deepens inequality. It demands a vigilant, organised, and principled opposition to ensure that development benefits all, not a select few.
