Dear Editor,
Ganesh Mahipaul’s recent News Room interview is a masterclass in revisionism, and it demands a response grounded not in his selective memory, but in APNU’s own public record. In that interview, Mr Mahipaul presents APNU as the reasonable, aggrieved partner: he claims to have proposed a proportional formula for sharing shadow portfolios among WIN, APNU, and Amanza Walton‑Desir, only to be confronted by a grasping WIN demanding thirteen portfolios and dictating which six APNU would receive. He then dramatises APNU’s alleged act of principle: “We said fine. You’re the main opposition? Shadow everything.”
This is a neat story, but it falls apart the moment it is placed beside his own written admissions and APNU’s earlier public announcements. In a statement reported in January 2026, Mr Mahipaul openly acknowledged that APNU “has proceeded independently with its parliamentary work, including the naming of Shadow Ministers,” describing this as APNU’s course of action “in the absence of cooperation.” That is not the language of a party nobly stepping aside while a larger partner “shadows everything”; it is the explicit confession of a unilateral decision to move ahead and construct APNU’s own shadow line‑up without a concluded agreement.
The chronology further exposes the problem. By late October 2025, APNU was already publicly unveiling what it itself called a “shadow cabinet,” with specific MPs assigned to specific ministries. In several instances, individual APNU parliamentarians were given responsibility for more than one portfolio. Public commentary at the time even noted that, depending on what WIN chose to do, some government ministers might end up with two shadows – a back‑handed way of recognising that APNU had already planted its flag across the ministerial landscape, and any WIN assignments would have to fit around that pre‑existing framework.
This is critical, because it directly contradicts the impression now being created that APNU was a passive, patient actor simply warding off WIN’s supposed “bullyism.” A party that has already rolled out its own shadow cabinet “in the current configuration of the National Assembly,” and has “proceeded independently” with its parliamentary work, including the naming of shadow ministers, cannot credibly turn around and claim that it merely refused to accept whatever WIN chose to “throw” at it. The record shows the opposite: APNU moved first, unilaterally mapped the government’s cabinet onto its twelve‑member bench, and only after those facts were established began to speak the language of proportionality and victimhood.
Mr Mahipaul’s invocation of proportional representation is therefore particularly cynical. “Proportional representation is what put all of us there. You can’t ignore that,” he now insists. Yet when APNU announced its shadow cabinet in October 2025, there was no public indication that these assignments were provisional or contingent on a negotiated sharing of responsibilities with WIN and Ms Walton‑Desir. The message was simple and self‑contained: APNU has named its shadow cabinet to press the government on the issues. Only later, when challenged by a partner with more seats and its own mandate, did proportionality suddenly become the lodestar of APNU’s rhetoric.
The uncomfortable truth is that APNU behaved as if its historical seniority and institutional age entitled it to design the opposition’s internal architecture and then invite WIN to adjust itself accordingly. It assumed that the newer party would defer, accept whatever sliver of space was left after APNU’s pre‑emptive allocations, and “play dead.” When WIN refused to do so, APNU did not revisit its own conduct; it rewrote the story. In that revised version, APNU is the brave defender against bullying, while its own well‑documented effort to dominate the opposition benches through early, unilateral shadow assignments is quietly airbrushed out.
If the opposition is serious about being, in Mr Mahipaul’s words, “a better 29 fighting a giant 36,” then it cannot build that project on such convenient amnesia. An opposition that seeks to hold a government accountable must itself be accountable to the factual record. In this case, the record is brutally clear: APNU was not the victim of WIN’s overreach; it was the author of a pre‑emptive grab of shadow portfolios, later dressed up as resistance to “bullyism.” No amount of eloquence in a television interview can reconcile that inconsistency, and the Guyanese public should not be asked to pretend otherwise.
Yours respectfully
Hemdutt Kumar
