Dear Editor,
As the sun rises on a New Year, the light reveals a landscape where the constitutional guardrails of our Republic have been systematically dismantled. The swearing-in of the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) on December 31, 2025, was not an act of governance; it was a high-stakes test of the “Engineered Necessity” doctrine—and it passed without a whisper of resistance.
The People’s Progressive Party (PPP/C) has mastered a dangerous legal alchemy: create a vacuum, then claim the right to fill it with unchecked power. By utilizing the Speaker of the National Assembly to stall the appointment of a Leader of the Opposition, the administration manufactured the very “crisis” it now claims to solve through unilateral action. This is a clear transgression of Article 207, executed with the chilling impunity of a government that no longer fears the Law, because it has mastered how to circumvent it.
Make no mistake: the TSC is the canary in the coal mine. If the President can appoint a Commission—intended by the framers to be a bipartisan check on executive power—without a single word of consultation or justification, then no citizen’s rights are safe. This was a test—run to see if Guyana would accept governance without transparency. By succeeding yesterday, the administration has paved a smooth road for a one-party state where “consultation” is treated as an optional courtesy rather than a constitutional mandate.
While the government acts with ruthless alacrity, the Opposition has remained dangerously reactive. With a camp full of prominent legal minds, the failure to file for a Writ of Mandamus to force the Speaker to fulfill his mandate is a catastrophic lapse in judgment.
The Opposition voters base did not entrust you with their mandate for “social media activism” or “befuddled” press releases. They handed it over for the vigorous, legal, and parliamentary defence of democracy. By allowing the government to “steamroll” through the TSC appointments, the Opposition has signaled to the administration that the gates are open. They have effectively de-neutered themselves at the very moment the nation required their sharpest teeth.
While the administration celebrates its “efficiency,” the soul of the nation is being eaten away by the silence surrounding the enrichment of its ministers, and their inner-circle, with the erosion of checks and balances. When the ordinary citizen can no longer look to the Constitution for protection, they are left at the mercy of political patronage.
We call upon the 29 Opposition Members of Parliament and their legal counsel to act. The time for nonchalance is over. The “Doctrine of Necessity” is being used as a cloak for dictatorship, and only a surgical, relentless legal and political counter-offensive can stop it.
We do not want “Business as Usual” in 2026. We want a Republic that respects its own laws. We want an Opposition that fights as if the future of the next generation depends on it—because it does.
Let’s move beyond the rhetoric, this is not the time to lick your wounds, it is time to “restore the guardrails of democracy” by ending the “engineered necessity”
Tactical strategy for the “de-neutered” opposition:
Immediate Mandamus: File the Writ against the Speaker now. Do not wait for the next appointment. Establish through the court that the Speaker’s intransigence is a functional block to the Constitution.
Litigate the “Necessity”: Challenge the TSC appointments not just on Article 207, but by arguing that “Necessity” cannot be invoked when the “Necessity” was self-created by an arm of the state (the Speaker).
The International Dossier: Move beyond “wining and dining.” Present the international community with a formal dossier detailing the link between the Speaker’s inaction and the President’s unilateralism as a breach of the Inter-American Democratic Charter.
As we begin 2026, the “clear and present danger” is that if this TSC appointment remains unchallenged, it becomes the blueprint for every other constitutional commission—from the Police to the Judiciary. The “one-party state” doesn’t arrive with a bang; it arrives through a series of unanswered “tests” like the one that occurred on Dec.31st. at 11:00 a.m.