THERE were a lot of takeaways from last week’s Budget 2026 debates in the National Assembly, some serious, some comical, and a few so theatrically absurd they would shame a roadside Ole Mas band. I am not joking. When I saw and heard David Hinds’s and Dexter Todd’s presentations in particular, it did occur to me that these men in suits might have imagined themselves performing political theatre at the corner of Lamaha Street and Vlissengen Road.
By contrast, listening to the interventions from the government benches, senior ministers and fresh‑faced MPs alike, most Guyanese must have felt, as I did, a deep sense of relief that they had put their X next to the cup in last September’s National and Regional Elections.
However, I wondered what those Guyanese – and yes, there are many of them – who voted for APNU/WIN heard when their MPs took the floor of the august National Assembly this last week. More to the point, what on earth did they hear when the Leader of the Opposition rose to address the House two nights ago?
There were buffoons, bullies, and then came the sanctioned messiah with a script. Guyana has now lived long enough to see an indicted gold dealer, denounced by the United States Treasury and facing a multi‑count indictment abroad, rise in the National Assembly, clutching his prepared text, and attempting to pass himself off as the moral conscience of our nation. It is one thing for a man to tell his own story, but it’s quite another for 109,000 voters to have decided that this is the story they want representing their best interests.
From the moment Azruddin began his Budget 2026 presentation, it was clear he had come not to scrutinise the nation’s finances but to audition for the role of Pablo Escobar with a parliamentary pass. He opened by listing his own alleged sins like a twisted résumé – “sanctioned man, gold smuggler, international fugitive” – the only thing missing was a LinkedIn endorsement from OFAC.
Then, with the straightest of faces, he declared himself “first a humanitarian before a politician,” as though a few houses built with ill‑begotten gains can wash away a decade of allegations and an unsealed indictment.
This, apparently, is the new morality of Opposition politics in Guyana. What played out in the House on Friday night was not an alternative vision for Guyana; it was an infomercial for Brand Azruddin, complete with product placement.
Azruddin reminded the nation that in his glory days, the banks would call him at midnight to get a couple of million US for the next day. He has never explained how he got those millions that enabled him to run a parallel central bank from the back of his daddy’s gold shop.
Ashni Singh put his finger on the central moral horror: tens of thousands of Guyanese have jeopardised themselves by their association with Azruddin. I hope they were paying attention when his mask kept slipping. Their “humanitarian” who claims to feel the people’s pain could not resist sneering at a veteran parliamentarian’s “cigarettes”, reducing a woman old enough to be his grandmother to a punchline on the floor of the House.
This is what makes Ashni’s Pablo Escobar analogy so apt. There was no need to say the name; every Guyanese listening understood the silhouette: the sanctioned businessman who uses the poor as props for his social media reels.
The ethical question is not complicated: how did we get to a place where our Parliament ended up with a man whose curriculum vitae comes with its own OFAC annexe? What exactly are we teaching young Guyanese when we allow Azruddin to stand there, read a speech he did not write, and pronounce judgement on the very institutions that will be called upon to process his case?
It is tempting to dismiss him as a temporary spectacle, a noisy, gaudy interlude in our political history that will pass when the courts are done. That would be a mistake. The real danger is not Azruddin himself; it is the normalisation of his type. And for that I blame his father’s shocking behaviour, which he should be ashamed of.
The idea that you can be sanctioned abroad, indicted for elaborate schemes of fraud and tax evasion, and your response is not to retreat in shame but to form a party, demand a state salary, and promise to “get you out of power 2031” is a stain on our political culture.
Guyana deserves an Opposition that can hold a government’s feet to the fire without standing in gasoline. It deserves criticism of the State from someone who is not ‘wanted’ elsewhere. It deserves scrutiny from an individual whose signature achievement is not having taught the banks how to beg at midnight. Above all, it deserves that its poor are not used as human shields by men who discovered “the voiceless” the minute they got whiff of an indictment.
The courts will do what courts do. In the meantime, the rest of us have a civic duty. We cannot stop anyone from calling himself “first a humanitarian before a politician.” But we can insist that the title “Leader of the Opposition” belongs to someone whose greatest claim to fame is not a sanctions list, a race car, and a very well‑rehearsed script.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.
