Dear Editor,
I write in response to Mr. Kit Nascimento’s letter of January 24th, 2026 in the Stabroek News titled `The danger I warned of has befallen the country.’ While his grave tone is noted, his central thesis appears predicated on a selective and outdated reading of contemporary geopolitical statecraft, particularly as it applies to Guyana’s circumstances and the way international relations work in the Western Hemisphere.
A more instructive precedent is found in our regional neighbour, Venezuela. There, the U.S. government has engaged directly and substantively with a senior administration whose key members, including President Delcy Rodríguez, are designated under specific U.S. sanctions programmes administered by OFAC. This demonstrates a clear principle of modern diplomacy: where overriding strategic interests align, working-level channels with sanctioned individuals in official authority can be and are established. This reality fundamentally rebuts the assumption that a sanctioned designation is an immutable bar to all forms of engagement or to the stability of a nation.
Mr. Nascimento’s assertion that the potential appointment of Mr. Azruddin Mohamed to a parliamentary role presents an existential threat to Guyana’s economy is therefore not supported by credible evidence. As the U.S. Embassy in Georgetown has explicitly clarified, “Guyana is not subject to OFAC’s broad jurisdiction-based sanctions. As a result, US persons are not generally prohibited from investing in Guyana.” So even if we have a President Azruddin in place, once he is not signing the commercial agreements, the United States will continue to do business with Guyana; will continue to talk to him and will continue to engage with him, similarly to how they are engaging with President Delcy in Venezuela, once his strategic interests align with that of the United States.
The legal mechanism is a prohibition on financial transactions with the specific individual, not a blanket embargo on a nation or its institutions. To conflate a constitutional, scrutinizing parliamentary role with direct executive control over commercial transactions is a critical analytical flaw.
Thus Mr. Nascimento’s narrative demands that Guyana pre-emptively subvert its own democratic processes based on speculation and a misreading of the new global political order. The first duty of any government is to uphold the constitution and even the Americans have asked Guyana to do this. So which parallel universe is Mr. Nascimento operating from that is certainly not a real place?
To suggest that the constitutionally mandated choice of a parliamentary leader by 29 elected representatives should be voided by some phantom external pressure—rather than by due legal process—sets a dangerous and undemocratic precedent. It implies that Guyanese democracy should yield to conjecture, supposition and plain wildness.
The more rational, middle of the road position can be mirrored to the confidence expressed by Mr. Mohamed’s legal team since from all appearances, it is likely rooted in this very understanding of nuanced international practice when they stated “Mr. Mohamed is going nowhere”.
Furthermore, the personal challenge issued to Mr. Mohamed by Mr. Nascimento, to forgo his legal rights, is antithetical to democratic norms. Every citizen is entitled to the presumption of innocence and a legal defence. Applying a different standard to different elected officials undermines the rule of law and is just plain old fashioned hypocrisy. Did Mr. Nascimento apply this benchmark to President Irfaan Ali just prior to him being sworn in as the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, when he had 19 active criminal charges against him in a Court of Law?
In conclusion, Mr. Nascimento’s letter advocates for a posture of fear over constitutional fidelity. True and lasting stability in any nation is secured by steadfast adherence to the rule of law and institutional integrity, not by sacrificing parliamentary procedure to unsubstantiated, unproved and phantom consequences. What Mr. Nascimento is proposing is utter madness!
Guyana’s democracy is robust enough to navigate complex international realities without succumbing to extremist points of views from people like Mr. Kit Nascimento that serves no national interest, but a bigoted political partisan position.
Might I remind Mr. Nascimento that he served three partisan political parties (the United Force, the People’s National Congress and the People’s Progressive Party) using the same political techniques. It is time he reboot and upgrade his playbook; it is stale and obsolete. It is rather sad that this is what Kit has been reduced to; quite sad.