Very much in keeping with its history of taking Guyana down unfathomable rabbit holes, leading to much loss of life and property and perennial costly consequences such as the Venezuelan border dispute, in 2025, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) government of Dr. Irfaan Ali has been declared an ‘elected autocracy’, i.e. a dictatorship. This is because for over two decades, the ethnic oligarchy that controls that party has been determined to establish ethnic/political domination in a country of ethnic minorities. Nonetheless, as occurred in the case of our neighbour, and notwithstanding the extreme level of intimidation now in play, dictatorship can be defeated if people are not duped by regime propaganda, archaic political stance and are sensibly led.
In ‘Don’t split the votes’ (VV: 17/08/2025) and as a guest speaker at an APNU/WPA coalition public meeting last Sunday, I called a upon those of African ethnicity not to split their votes and to support the APNU/WPA coalition.  This has infuriated the PPP, who using all manner of euphemisms and worse – ‘hold the line’ ,‘don’t split the votes’, ‘vote where your mother used to vote, and where your father used to vote’, ‘communities are important’ etc.- has perennially been and still is solidifying its political hold on the Indian population.
The president, who has been accused of attempting to establish an apartheid state for deliberately impoverishing Africans and trying to destroy their organisations, wants us to believe that ‘Race and hate and segregation have no place in a modern society’. Of course, the active content of his statement is not necessarily conjoint and once this is accepted, he is wrong.
Race and ethnicity are important concepts in the modern world, and I agree with Bishop Alleyne’s call on stakeholders ‘to vote with conscience, support justice and reject division:’ anyone with a modicum of conscience who values justice will certainly not vote for the PPP. Of course, as in Isreal, whether race/ethnic divisions lead to racism is context dependent and in Guyana racial/ethnic animosity will increase as the PPP continue to discriminate against other ethnicities, while paying lip service to the national motto of ‘One people’.
In 1992, the United Nations adopted its ‘Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities.  The declaration states that ‘Persons belonging to minorities have the right to establish and maintain their own associations [and] States shall protect the existence and the national or ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic identity of minorities within their respective territories and shall encourage conditions for the promotion of that identity.’
The days of ethnic assimilation are long gone and the 2008 independence constitution of Kosovo, backed by the United Nations Security Council, is said to contain ‘the highest democratic practices’ as they relate to ethnicity. In addition to the right of minorities to form their own associations, among many other things, the national constitution cannot be changed without a two-thirds vote from members of parliament, and a two-thirds vote from the minority representatives. The Kosovo government must contain at least one minister from the Serb community and one minister from any other non-majority community. Minority groups are guaranteed leadership and command positions in the police, the courts and the public prosecutor’s office, etc.
Unlike the PPP, my concern is about Guyana’s future given the senseless ethnic path that the PPP has been pursuing.  In 2009, I argued that ‘if the indigenous people are within a reasonable time to share equitably in what Guyana has, they need to develop their specific political organisation and agenda and use their statistical weight to force its implementation (SN, 11/09/2009).
The status quo remained, and in 2025, the Amerindian leadership has been complaining and begging for help. ‘The government current practices violate the indigenous people’s collective rights to self determination and land ownership… We also ask that the Permanent Forum monitor the government’s process to ensure that Guyana Indigenous Peoples are part of this national exercise that will determine the future of our rights, culture and lives. (https://nycaribnews.com/un-amerindians-of-guyana-have-no-rights-to-land-title-forum-says/).
Thus, a few months ago, I stated: ‘It is not precisely as I imagined, but if properly orchestrated, with Ms. Juretha Fernandes as his prime ministerial candidate, Mr. Aubrey Norton is suggesting an end to hundreds of years of relative Amerindian marginalisation and poverty (VV: 13/07/2025).
The PPP and its associates have captured and are using the state and its recent oil wealth to support and bolster the prolongation of its dictatorial rule. Given its long association with Guyana, the Carter Centre must have been aware of this behaviour. It must have known too that according to the world’s most comprehensive democratic index Guyana has been classed as elected autocracy. In its 2025 Pe-elections Statement on Guyana, the Center identified a few of the operational abuses that are largely a result of the prevailing political environment.
International best practise suggests that: ‘While there are many permutations and combinations of the various elements that make up electoral frameworks, building broad dialogue and political consensus among citizens and electoral contestants concerning the rules for competing for power are critical to developing confidence in election processes and governments that result from elections’ (https://www.ndi.org/sites/default/files/ Legal%20Frameworks%20Guide%20Sections%201-3%20-%20EN.pdf)
In this context, one statement the Center made is of particular importance to me. It stated that in the areas of tabulation and voter registration the regime made some changes in the law and ‘While these changes are welcome, the majority of the recommendations made by The Carter Center and other international observers following the 2020 election remain unaddressed.’
Very important recommendations remain unaddressed and, perhaps even more importantly, those that were addressed lack the consensus recommended by the 2020 observer missions and thus should hardly be ‘welcomed’. Ultimately, the PPP unilaterally used it’s one seat majority to bulldoze the rules though the National Assembly and this kind of unilateralism pervaded the entire reform process, and added to the other infractions must call into question the legitimacy of the process now in place.
Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas in ‘How to Rig an Election’ said that the system of international monitoring requires three main interventions to improve the prospects for protecting elections. In a nutshell, monitors need to keep up with the technological times and deploy biometric technology, computer logs and storage, and expertise to give an indication of whether there is a hidden digital pattern of electoral manipulation, ensure that weaknesses they identify in the system are rectified or refuse to monitor elections where this is not done, and devise and implement a common set of standards and give joint statements to send a clear message to the ruling parties.
