THE election is over. The PNC has been devastated, being reduced from 48 per cent of the vote in 2020 to 18 per cent in 2025. But where is the analysis by the PNC of where the PNC went wrong?
There is none. PNC and APNU leaders have offered their interpretations of the elections results, and the bankrupt PNC leadership is exonerated, and instead, they posit that the failure of the PNC in the election was as a result of the flaws of the African people themselves.
We start with the PNC leader himself. He cited three factors, all of which were acidic insults to African Guyanese. One is that people were paid to vote. Secondly, state resources helped the PPP and thirdly, the PNC did not have the financial resources to compete with the PPP and WIN.
Ganesh Mahipaul cited lack of money for the defeat. He said the PNC spent in 2025 about $300 million compared to billions used up by the PPP and WIN.
Tacuma Ogunseye and David Hinds offered identical interpretations – the African people are an economically disadvantaged group and that explains the defeat of the PNC by the PPP and WIN.
Let’s quote Ogunseye: “… the support of sections of the African population for WIN and PPP stemmed from years of economic hardship and desperation.”
Dorwain Bess of VPAC— one of the units in the coalition named Forward Guyana— made a most uninformed statement about the election results.
He wrote that the low turnout of 58 per cent indicates that people are questioning whether governance in Guyana is in sync with their aspirations.
Bess should have asked the question whether the low turnout is an indication that people see the opposition like him and all others in the opposition as failures, so they stayed home.
The psychological danger in the opposition’s interpretation of the election results is that the blame is put on African Guyanese themselves and not leaders who claim to represent the African race in Guyana.
First, if money led to the defeat of the PNC in 2025, how does one account for votes that WIN got in areas that WIN personnel did not visit and campaigned in? It appeared that Norton has not researched the Statements of Poll he has for the 2025 election.
Secondly, Mahipaul’s admission of reduced spending by the PNC in the 2025 election to a mere $300 million compared to $2 billion in 2020 brings into question the dying status of the PNC. In 2025, the PNC should have spent more than $2 billion because there was an ocean of money circulating in Guyana in 2022, 2024 and 2025 compared to 2020.
We are talking about the phenomenal influx of petro-dollars translated into entrepreneurial ventures and vast expansion of employment. In fact, statistically speaking, more African entrepreneurs sprang up in the years 2022-2024 than in 2019 and 2020 when oil money began trickling in. The political theorist can ask whether the middle-class Africans began withholding election donations to the PNC in 2025.
Thirdly, if money was the crucial factor in the PNC’s massive electoral loss, then where does that leave five years of the demonisation of the PPP and its government by the total opposition of which one of the highlights was Norton’s refusal to shake the president’s hand on two occasions?
One of the strategic assets of the Black American liberation movement from the 1960s onwards is that education frees the mind.
All anti-colonial and post-colonial scholars in sociology, economics, literature and political theory have argued that to block out the penetration of the colonial and imperialist narratives, the Third World must have their own counter-narratives.
If the theory of counter-narratives has validity, then the PNC and their related organisations have to answer the question as to why African Guyanese did not internalise five years of anti-PPP narratives and voted solidly behind the PNC.
In fact, the PNC had crucial and vital help in its five-year anti-PPP waltz through the two private newspapers – Kaieteur News and Stabroek News, influential sections of civil society and hate-filled messengers like Ogunseye himself, David Hinds, Rickford Burke and Mark Benschop and Melly Mel.
With that vast array of armoury directed at the PPP for five years, why did the PNC fail at the 2025 election? Why didn’t the anti-PPP narratives work rather than the money that Norton cites as the crucial factor in the PNC’s defeat? Space has run out but here is the answer.
The PNC, AFC and the rest of opposition political parties lost the 2025 poll because African Guyanese rejected them and turned to another party, the newcomer WIN. The decency of the African character defeated the PNC not the money of Azruddin Mohamed.

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.