Mashing an ants’ nest

Apr 12, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News-  The People’s Progressive Party Civic has always believed in its own myth. It has fashioned a story for itself, not unlike those old colonial scripts that once imposed a logic on illogical lives.

The story is one of inevitability, a belief that power belongs to them by virtue of their electoral dominance. But a party that begins to believe too fully in its own mythology risks losing the thread of the story. And that is what is happening now.

In the face of a new and largely undefined phenomenon—the emergence of AzMo and the curious solidarity shown to him by sections of the population—the ruling party is floundering. They do not understand it, and what they do not understand, they dismiss. They see the support as theatrical, contrived, stage-managed by dark forces hoping to destabilize their rule. But this is misreading the moment. Worse, it is misreading the people.

The PPPC has stopped listening. Power has made them tone-deaf. Detached from the rhythms of daily life, they no longer walk the streets they claim to represent. They do not stand in the parlors of the rural poor, nor linger at the corner shops where the talk is real and unfiltered. They rely instead on meetings held under large tents where people come from all over with a litany of problems – a reflection of a system of government that is dysfunctional. The PPPC has lost the ear for nuance, the feel for mood. In such a state, the signs of discontent become invisible to them, or worse, appear only as threats conjured by enemies.

But the people, in all their ordinariness, are not without perception. Even those mocked as lumpen possess a street wisdom that cannot be discounted. These are not citizens who pore over constitutional texts or recite legalese. But they know when a man is being hounded. They know when a family is being harassed. They know when advantage is being taken. And they do not like it.

AzMo may never enter the political ring—indeed, it may be fanciful to imagine him doing so. But in a strange, almost paradoxical way, the government has made him into a political figure. Not through policy, not through rhetoric, but through persecution. The more the State targets him, the more they sharpen his silhouette against the political sky. He becomes less a man and more a symbol of injustice, of State overreach, of a government unmoored from moral restraint.

That, perhaps, is what the PPPC fails to grasp. The people are not necessarily rallying to AzMo because they see in him a future president or even a reformer. They are not gathering around him out of ideology. Their presence is more primal, more emotional: they see a wrong, and they are reacting. They may never write a letter to the editor. They may never speak in public forums. But when a man is being dragged through the mud, something in them recoils. That recoil is what the government underestimates.

In believing that this solidarity is manipulated or orchestrated, the ruling party is insulting the intelligence of the electorate. It is a dangerous assumption. People who are poor are not stupid. People who lack a university degree are not blind. In fact, their experience often sharpens their sense of justice, makes it instinctive. They know when a man is being set up. They know when a government is trying too hard to destroy someone. And they begin to ask: why?

Why this man? Why his family? Why the persistent public humiliation? When these questions arise—and they are arising—so too does a subtle shift in the public mood. Empathy grows and anger simmers. Doubt begins to eat away at certainty. And in a polarized electorate, even a sliver of doubt can be seismic.

The PPPC may feel secure, cushioned by numbers, intoxicated by majorities. But public mood is not static. It is not tethered to one election cycle. It changes with stories, with symbols, with moments that touch the conscience of a people. And the constant targeting of AzMo, far from breaking him, is humanizing him in the eyes of many. They do not necessarily love him. But they see what is being done to him, and they do not like it.

In this way, the ruling party may be stirring up an ants’ nest. It is a dangerous game, this belief that the people are pawns. That their reactions can be managed, their feelings manipulated. History, even in this small republic, has shown otherwise. The ants, once disturbed, do not always return quietly to the mound.

It would be wise, then, for the PPPC to step back—not out of fear, but out of wisdom. To listen. To watch. To walk again among the people, barefoot if necessary. They must stop seeing threats where there are only signs, and stop chasing ghosts while real resentments simmer. The man they fear may not be a savior, but the sympathy he generates could be the spark that lights a wider fire.

In a land where every wound is recent, and every injustice still stings, the people remember. And they do not take kindly to the sight of a man—any man—being broken before their eyes.

(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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