Financial Analyst Joel Bhagwandin has warned Guyanese against what he described as Nigel Hughes’ dangerous call for a minority government, arguing that it would “stymie development, block progress, and reverse prosperity” in the country.

Bhagwandin, in a statement issued Friday, said Hughes’ pitch to voters, to give him the power to disapprove national budgets and “hold the PPP/C government accountable”, is nothing short of a backdoor attempt to paralyse the nation’s development agenda.

“Imagine the leader of a political party, Nigel Hughes, pleading for you to vote for a minority government—so that he can claim to ‘hold the PPP/C government accountable’ and disapprove national budgets brought before the National Assembly.

“In other words, he is asking voters to give him the power to stymie development, to block progress, and to reverse the prosperity gains achieved over the last five years,” Bhagwandin said.

Bhagwandin reminded that Guyana has already endured the instability of a minority government and “we know it was no good for our country, no good for development, and nothing but an impediment to progress.”

“HYPOCRISY” AND A “DAMNING TRACK RECORD”

The analyst did not hold back, accusing Hughes and his party of political hypocrisy.

“This is the very same political party that already had an opportunity to govern in coalition with the APNU during the period 2015–2020, and yet today has the audacity to speak about accountability. To now promote the farce of ‘opposition-led accountability through a minority government’ is not only a hogwash conceptualisation—it is hypocrisy,” Bhagwandin asserted.

He listed a series of past governance failures and alleged breaches under the APNU+AFC administration, of which Hughes’ party was a part: the attempt to rig the 2020 elections, which Hughes himself said he needed to “study.” The closure of sugar estates that put more than 7,000 workers on the breadline. The concealment of the US$18 million signing bonus, in violation of the Fiscal Management and

Accountability Act. Over $200 billion in procurement violations flagged by the Auditor General.

Spending of more than $400 billion without parliamentary approval after the 2018 no-confidence vote and the $200 million “feasibility study” for the Demerara River bridge that produced nothing of value.

Bhagwandin also singled out Hughes’ personal role, noting that as attorney for Booker Tate, he “ensured that once his party came to government in 2015–2020, his client was pardoned from legal action in the Skeldon project fiasco—allowing them to walk away scot-free from their failures, while the PPP/C government had been seeking $4 billion in damages.”

Bhagwandin accused Hughes of seeking office not to build Guyana, but to sabotage its progress.
“This is the party now begging you for a minority government. Not to lead. Not to develop. Not to serve. But to sabotage. To derail. To cripple Guyana’s future,” he said.

He urged voters to reject what he termed Hughes’ “politics of obstruction and betrayal.”

“We cannot afford Nigel Hughes’s politics of obstruction and betrayal. We cannot afford a return to corruption, to closure, to chaos. Come Monday, September 1, 2025—choose stability, choose growth, choose leadership that delivers. Stay the course with President Ali for another term of progress.”