Dear Editor,
Guyana possesses oil wealth most countries would envy. Yet our corruption index score is 41 out of 100. We rank 135th globally in economic freedom. Our net migration rate is minus 8 per thousand annually — people are physically choosing to leave rather than endure a system that extracts national wealth and concentrates it among the politically connected, including yours truly. In Regions 1, 6, 7, and 10, communities wait for roads, schools, water ambulances, and electricity that Georgetown takes for granted. Children in Issederu, Winiperu, Itaballi, and Agatash stop schooling after primary not because they lack ability but because government decisions about who matters have made secondary education structurally inaccessible. This is policy — the measurable consequence of single-party dominance without genuine coalition accountability in a nation whose Constitution demands something categorically better. Region 10, home to 65,000 Guyanese, still has no Regional Chair. That is deliberate denial of representation. When a regime controlling oil wealth blocks regions from meaningful participation, constitutional rights exist on paper alone and democracy begins its quiet death.
PNC with the apparatus practised this identical methodology—packing courts, police, and institutions along ethnic and class lines. The faces have changed. The pattern hasn’t.
THE SPEAKER’S CHAIR ISN’T A PARTISAN INSTRUMENT
This brings us to a constitutional principle that the current Parliament has placed under acute stress and that every Guyanese citizen — regardless of party — must understand with clarity: the Speaker of the National Assembly isn’t a government appointee. The Speaker is the servant of the entire Parliament and through Parliament the servant of the entire electorate.
The exclusion of Walton-Desir from parliamentary committee service is therefore not a procedural technicality. It’s a constitutional violation. Walton-Desir represents the Forward Guyana Movement — the 3rd largest opposition party by parliamentary seat count following the 2025 election. She holds evident professional qualifications. She holds a constitutional entitlement, identical to every other elected MP, to meaningful parliamentary participation including committee service. Her exclusion on the basis that her party is new, small, or inconvenient to the administration’s parliamentary management strategy is constitutionally indefensible on every available ground.
The logic is elementary: Parliament exists to represent the electorate. Every citizen who voted for FGM is represented by Walton-Desir. Excluding her from committee service does not merely sideline one MP — it disenfranchises every Guyanese who placed their trust in that movement and every citizen whose democratic interest her committee participation would have served. Partisanship has no constitutional home in the Speaker’s chair. None. The moment a Speaker accommodates MPs whose cooperative disposition serves the administration while blocking MPs whose independence challenges it, the Speaker has ceased to be an officer of Parliament and become an instrument of executive control. That transformation is precisely what the 2026 comparative study documented in Tunisia, Turkey, and Venezuela as the procedural face of soft authoritarianism — and Opposition Chief Whip Tabitha Sarabo-Halley is correct to forecast the structured parliamentary standoffs that this institutional capture makes inevitable.
The Bar Association, civil society, and Guyana’s international democratic partners must treat the Walton-Desir exclusion not as a parliamentary housekeeping matter but as the constitutional signal it demonstrably is. Citizen inclusivity is a non-negotiable constitutional obligation that attaches to every office of the Parliament, including and especially the Speaker’s chair.
Mr. Norton would serve the Opposition’s cause considerably better by directing his political science training toward building the coalition that displaces this administration rather than targeting WIN’s leader. His target is misplaced. Misplaced focus is an advantage the incumbent doesn’t deserve to receive for free.
FOREIGN POLICY RESET
5 minutes examining the current administration’s regional record reveals a government that has progressively lost clarity about who Guyana’s genuine allies are and who exploits its vulnerability. The Essequibo question has been managed through ICJ dependence and diplomatic passivity without building the bilateral treaty architecture and American partnership that would make any eventual judgment enforceable. Regional policy increasingly reflects patronage network priorities over sovereign national interests.
A Mohamed presidency delivers the reset this moment requires, grounded in CARICOM cooperative security, engagement with the U.S., India, China, France, Canada, the U.K., and Russia on Guyana’s own terms, and the unapologetic assertion of sovereign interests that a small state sitting atop world-class petroleum reserves is fully entitled to practise. The U.S., Canada, and the EU, in particular France and U.K., have indicated willingness to engage a WIN government. 1 year into Mohamed’s leadership, that confidence is no longer theoretical.
Against documented institutional failure, Mohamed’s conduct stands in categorical contrast — and crucially, it predates any campaign. In August 2025, with no executive power, he personally navigated deliberately obstructed hinterland routes to reach communities the established parties had abandoned. He donates part of his parliamentary salary to those in need. He works 16-hour days. He defers publicly to his colleagues rather than seeking personal prominence. He has named specific governmental misconduct with documented evidence on at least 5 occasions in the past 2 months — identifying ministers whose corrupt lifestyles he has catalogued as LOTO while their fellow Guyanese stand in bread lines.
In law, behaviour consistent with a declared principle across 13 months of unscripted public life meets the standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt. Mohamed’s record runs from 26th May, 2025 to today. It can’t be manufactured for silly season. It already exists and is the most reliable predictor of what his presidency would produce.
THE COALITION THAT LOOKS LIKE GUYANA
WIN’s leadership already reflects all of Guyana’s ethnic communities and major faith traditions — Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Indigenous, Afro-Guyanese, Indo-Guyanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and Mixed-race — as operational constitutionalism rather than symbolic gesture. WIN’s young, tenacious Afro-Guyanese woman, Prime Minister in waiting and constitutionally empowered to act as President in Mohamed’s absence, holds genuine institutional authority — not a ceremonial title. Leaders who don’t build this culture before assuming executive power don’t build it after.
The coalition WIN has assembled — APNU’s institutional experience and regional reach under younger leadership, FGM’s internationally recognised democratic courage, AFC’s community connections, ALP’s grassroots village networks, and ANUG’s legal and technical expertise — produces a parliamentary majority the current government’s fragile slim hold cannot withstand. 16 seats went to a party that didn’t exist in 2020. 1 seat went to another new party. The electorate is already searching for something better and has been demonstrating that search at the ballot box. APNU must understand that the only credible path to electoral relevance is genuine coalition with WIN, not competition against it. Every day of hesitation is an advantage the incumbent banks permanently.
THE VERDICT AND THE X
In 1992, Guyanese overcame decades of entrenched 1-party rule and marked their X. Everything changed — not because of charisma or inherited party loyalty, but because the alternative was credible and the record was clear.
That same courage lives in every Guyanese today. The constitutional case is documented. The economic failure is indexed. The foreign policy drift is visible. The Speaker’s partisan management of parliamentary participation is a constitutional violation that every citizen — regardless of which party they support — should regard as a direct disenfranchisement of their democratic voice.
Check the numbers. Read the Constitution. Look at the record of the man asking for your trust. Then make the rational decision the evidence supports.
Guyana’s oil belongs to every family in every region of this republic not to the familiar circles of any single administration.
One year old. Documented. Constitutionally coherent. Ready. Mark your X. Choose progress. Choose WIN. Your future is on the ballot in 2030.