GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) says the three-month-old We Invest In Nationhood (WIN) political party could be put to the test in the National Assembly after running a community-based election campaign for the September general and regional elections.
The party, which is headed by the 38-year-old US-sanctioned billionaire businessman, Azruddin Mohamed, won 16 seats in the elections and will become the main opposition to the ruling People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) that won a second consecutive victory at the polls and now controls 36 of the 65 seats in the Parliament.
The coalition, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), was removed as the main opposition party after it received 77,000 votes and 12 seats. At the same time, the Forward Guyana Movement (FGM) is the other party to have gained a seat in Parliament.
Under Guyana’s proportional representation system, 40 legislators are elected from a single nationwide constituency, and 25 from 10 geographical constituencies.
“Transitioning from an electoral strategy to a parliamentary party will present a challenge for WIN. Few of its members are household names, and even fewer have prior legislative experience,” the GHRA said in a statement.
It said that WIN will be entering the National Assembly with “broad support from economically marginalized communities” after having “made unexpected inroads” by leveraging community-based electoral campaigns to counter “sustained PPP/C efforts to pressure and penalize its membership.
“Beyond policy positions, WIN’s rise may help reduce decades-long ethnic polarization between Afro- and Indo-Guyanese communities, an unexpected but welcome development,” the human rights group said.
The GHRA stated that, against the backdrop of all observer missions highlighting the ruling party’s abuse of incumbency through the use of state media, state-owned property, government vehicles, and personnel to advance the party’s campaign, Guyana risks seeing a repeat of this in future general and regional elections.
“Without sustained advocacy, these and other reforms, elections in Guyana will remain vulnerable to the abuse of State resources and the influence of money,” the association said.
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