Dear Editor,
The joint statement issued by WIN and APNU after such a long wait should concern every serious-minded Guyanese, not because of the nothingness it announces, but because of what it unintentionally reveals.
After the Opposition’s so-called “high-level meeting” between Opposition parties aspiring to exercise national leadership, the document concludes with the extraordinary admission that “no final decisions were taken on the substantive matters discussed”. The statement, after the meeting, largely repeated the disputes that brought the parties together without resolving them.
That is not an achievement. It is an indictment of political preparedness.
The issues identified – GECOM representation, electoral scrutineers, the Region Ten RDC impasse and Local Government Commission nominations – are matters largely concerning the Opposition’s own political relationships and representation. Yet the people now presenting themselves as an alternative Government could not settle even among themselves the principles governing their cooperation.
If an Opposition cannot efficiently negotiate its own internal political arrangements, Guyanese are entitled to ask a much more fundamental question: how can it credibly claim readiness to manage a country undergoing one of the most consequential economic transformations in the world?
I have said it on numerous occasions: national leadership requires considerably more than Opposition to the Government. It requires competence, institutional respect, economic judgement, diplomatic credibility, policy coherence and the capacity to make difficult decisions.
Guyana today is managing petroleum revenues, infrastructure expansion, energy security, agriculture, education, healthcare, regional integration, border security, and complex international relationships. Government cannot operate by perpetual consultation about when another consultation should begin.
There is an even more consequential question surrounding the leadership of this Opposition.
Mr Azruddin Mohamed remains designated under the United States’ Global Magnitsky sanctions programme, which is a targeted framework used to impose visa bans and asset freezes on individuals and entities responsible for human rights abuses and significant corruption worldwide. The US Treasury officially sanctioned Mohamed and associated businesses in June 2024. He has subsequently been federally indicted in the United States on allegations involving money laundering and wire fraud arising from an alleged gold-export scheme. Those charges remain allegations, and he is entitled to the presumption of innocence.
But political suitability for the highest executive office is a different question from criminal guilt.
Guyana must ask whether someone simultaneously confronting sanctions, a US federal indictment and extradition proceedings represents the kind of diplomatic and institutional position from which this country should ever chance to be led.
That question has become more, not less, serious following judicial scrutiny. Recently Guyana’s Court of Appeal unanimously rejected the Mohameds’ challenge to the Authority to Proceed, and in July 2026 Guyana’s apex court, the Caribbean Court of Justice, dismissed their subsequent appeal, allowing the extradition proceedings to continue.
And herein lies APNU’s profound political contradiction. A party that once presented itself as a Government-in-waiting is now attempting to construct political cooperation around a leader carrying unprecedented international legal and diplomatic complications, while the parties themselves struggle to agree on comparatively elementary questions of Opposition representation.
This joint statement therefore inadvertently provides the country with something valuable: a demonstration of the difference between wanting power and being prepared to govern.
A credible Opposition should challenge the Government vigorously. Democracy requires it. But criticism is not a governing philosophy; anger is not an economic programme; social-media popularity is not statecraft; and a coalition united principally by its desire to remove the incumbent Government is not automatically a credible alternative Government.
Guyana’s future is simply too important for experimentation with leadership that has not demonstrated the institutional discipline, political coherence or international standing required by the presidency.
If WIN and APNU require days of negotiation to produce a statement announcing that they agreed on virtually nothing substantive, Guyanese should contemplate what would happen if these same forces were required to make decisions affecting nearly 800,000 citizens, billions of dollars in national resources and Guyana’s standing before the world.
The document was intended to demonstrate Opposition cooperation.
Instead, it may have produced the strongest argument yet for why this political configuration and, particularly, its present leadership is profoundly unsuited to govern Guyana.