Dear Editor,
Reference is made to Mr Hemdutt Kumar’s recent letter in response to my previous article in the media. The author deemed my analysis to be a “cover up” of “convenient snippets” aimed at “sanitising” the 2025 Election and humorously “gaslighting” the public. Yet Mr Kumar’s response carefully and rather conveniently, avoids the central issue that prompted my original letter: Azruddin Mohamed’s repeated and extraordinary claim that he won the 2025 elections and that GECOM fabricated the election results. No amount of narrative shifts to incumbency advantage, media balance or campaign finance can rescue that assertion from the factless chasm in which it resides.
Shortly after taking the oath of office of Member of Parliament, the now indicted Azruddin Mohamed told the media that he actually won the 2025 Elections and insisted that “this is a rigged Government.” His sole evidentiary basis? He insisted GECOM’s website briefly stopped working.
The Commonwealth Observer Group (COG) report is unambiguous: Despite attempts to taint perception of the voter’s list, there was simply no evidence of voter-roll manipulation. Neither was there any evidence of electoral fraud, with the count being “conducted in a transparent manner” as per the report. These facts rubbish Mohamed’s claim that the election outcome was manufactured.
Instead, Mr Kumar shifts the debate into the incumbent’s advantage. Prior to 2025, the last time an incumbent President was ever re-elected in Guyana was President Jagdeo in 2006. This renders that argument sterile. To conflate these issues is to misrepresent the report.
Most tellingly, Mr Kumar does not defend Mohamed’s declaration that he is the “real President”, in which he doubled down on his rigging claims. The EU Observer Report previously confirmed that WIN agents were present in every single Polling Station. Mr Mohamed has heralded this very report. Therefore, any accusation of fraud is accusing all poll workers and all-party agents as complicit in this fraud – including those from WIN. I find it heartbreaking that WIN’s leadership would throw their own Polling Agents under the bus like this, given they would have signed off on every single SOP; a fact confirmed by the Commonwealth Report. Here, Kumar’s silence isn’t just curious; it is revealing.
Mr Jason Carter recently affirmed that Guyana is a “vibrant democracy”, with much to be proud of. Healthy debate of incumbency, media ecosystems and campaign finance laws are necessary. But fabricating electoral victories without evidence is poisonous to any democratic society; so too are those who spread them. The Commonwealth report doesn’t validate Azruddin Mohamed’s rigging claims, but decisively shreds them.
Any spirited debate on the 2025 Elections, based in Guyana, the UK or elsewhere, must begin with this basic truth, Azruddin Mohamed did not win the 2025 election, and no Observer report supports the claim that he did.