The PPP is afraid

Mar 30, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News- Bharrat Jagdeo, General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), stood before the press last Thursday and delivered the usual political incantations—confidence without arrogance, vigilance without complacency. It was a performance polished by decades of political theater, the kind of outburst meant to reassure the faithful and unsettle the opposition. The PPP, he insisted, is not taking victory for granted. It is working, fighting, sweating for every vote.

But beneath the rhetoric, there is something else at work—an old, familiar specter that has haunted the party for years, the same specter that cost it power in 2015: corruption. That is the fear behind the bluster

Jagdeo would have you believe that the PPP’s confidence is unshakable, that its record in government will deliver another term. And yet, the party’s recent actions betray a nervous energy, a defensive crouch. The aggression directed at Azruddin Mohammed and his family—once allies, now targets—suggests a party that knows its grip is not as firm as it pretends.  And the funny thing is that Azruddin has not announced that he is contesting the elections; he is merely having conversations with the people.

Because of this constitutionally-protected activity, the Mohameds, former PPP supporters and donors, now find themselves on the receiving end of the party’s wrath. PPP supporters have been accused of disrupting the public outreaches of Azruddin Mohammed. This is a tactic straight from the old playbook: isolate, intimidate, exclude. Jagdeo dismisses these disruptions as “spontaneous,” a claim so thin it wouldn’t survive a light breeze. The truth is simpler—the PPP is afraid.

A one-seat majority is a fragile thing. A lead of 15,000 votes can vanish in a single electoral miscalculation. And third parties—those wildcards that siphon off just enough support—can turn a sure victory into a shocking defeat. The PPP remembers 2011, when corruption eroded its dominance and left it clinging to a minority government. It remembers 2015, when the scales finally tipped.

The PPP’s problem has never been its work ethic. The party is relentless, resolute and ruthless when it needs to be. Its problem is the rot within, the kind that no amount of campaigning can scrub away.

The U.S. government’s recent sanctions against the Mohammed family accuse them of smuggling, bribery, and corrupting public officials. If the allegations are true—if 10,000 kilograms of gold were indeed smuggled out of the country, mostly under the PPP’s watch—then the question is unavoidable: Who enabled it? Who looked the other way? Who got paid?

The U.S. has reportedly handed Guyana’s government a dossier detailing these operations. One wonders how many names in that dossier belong to PPP officials.  Corruption is the party’s original sin, the flaw that undoes its record of economic management. In 2011, it was a series of scandals that cost the PPP its parliamentary majority. The PPPC has never forgiven this newspaper for exposing its misdeeds. By 2015, the stink had grown too strong to ignore. Voters, even some within the PPP’s traditional base, had had enough. Now, with the 2025 elections looming, the same questions return. Can the PPP win? Almost certainly. But can it win and keep its house in order? History suggests otherwise. The PPP’s response to threats—internal or external—has always been the same: crush them. The Mohamed family is merely the latest example. Once valued, now vilified. Once donors, now denounced. The party’s message is clear: cross us, and we will turn the full force of the State against you.

But this strategy carries risks. A government that governs by fear eventually breeds resentment. A party that relies on intimidation may win elections, but it loses legitimacy. And in the long run, legitimacy is the currency that matters. Jagdeo knows this. He is too shrewd a politician not to. Yet he persists, betting that the opposition is too weak, the electorate too forgetful, the resources from oil too much to hold back progress. It is a dangerous gamble.  The PPP’s greatest enemy is not the APNU+AFC. It is not Azruddin Mohamed or any other third-party challenger.  It is the memory of its own deficiencies. Corruption is not just a scandal—it is a slow-acting poison.

The PPP may well win in 2025.  But if it does not confront the corruption within its ranks, if it continues to govern as though accountability is for others, then it will only be a matter of time before history repeats itself.  Confidence is not enough. Hard work is not enough. Sooner or later, the past always catches up.

 (The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)        

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