WHEN you want to see how dishevelled the thinking of people is who criticize the Government of Guyana then constantly monitor their output. The nonsense is simply incredible.  So Kidackie Amsterdam of APNU and Aubrey Norton were in conversation.

Amsterdam asked Norton if the law allows the PNC to retain the seats in the Regional Democratic Councils that were occupied by PNC councillors that two weeks ago defected to the PPP. Norton told Amsterdam that the law does not allow for the PNC to recall them.

As a reaction, Amsterdam retorted that although the law doesn’t allow for their removal, is the PNC going to do nothing about the state of affairs? You are not going to believe what the next topic between the two men was. Amsterdam asked Norton what the PNC’s attitude is to the three APNU GECOM Commissioners. Norton said they cannot be removed by anyone. They are appointed for life.

Now, Amsterdam and Norton have opened themselves to ridicule. If the law allows for permanency, then just as Amsterdam thinks that even withstanding that fact, the PNC should do something about the RDC councillors, why should the Opposition WIN party do nothing about the APNU GECOM councillors?

I am certainly not a fan of WIN and of the two parties, PNC and WIN. My preference is for the PNC, but the danger of ignoring moral laws and legal rules for the sake of convenience inevitably causes destruction.  The Guyanese people voted in September 2025. The PPP won. We as a nation should respect the nation’s choice; accept that the PPP has a constitutional right to administer Guyana.

The nation changed the party it wanted to be in opposition. It chose WIN over the PNC. I prefer the PNC over WIN. I wished that it was the PNC in opposition than WIN, but that was not the choice of the electorate and the voters’ ballots have to be respected, or else democracy goes out the window.

Let me repeat for perhaps a million times what I wrote in my columns and said on the Freddie Kissoon Show. In 2020, I voted for the Lenox Shuman party, the Liberal and Justice Party. When, on the next day after voting closed, I saw the attempts to rig the election, I became emotional and my emotions overpoured in every daily column of mine until Irfaan Ali was sworn in as president. The day you deny the people their right to vote, the day you disrespect how they voted, that is the day your country is going down the road to perdition. We have been there before. I wasn’t going to accept Guyana’s return to hell in March 2020 without a fight.

There is a new majority parliamentary opposition and whether we like it or not, that opposition party has to be represented in GECOM. That is the law. Unfortunately, Messrs. Alexander, Trotman and Corbin cannot speak in GECOM on behalf of WIN. To allow that is to recognise the descent into constitutional, legal and moral caricature.

Norton does not understand context when he talked about permanent commissioners. The permanence is contextual. It rests on the outcome of national elections. If there was no opposition after the September 2020 poll, just as there were twice in Barbados, who then were APNU commissioners representing in GECOM?

There is one great circus that awaits Guyana. If the APNU commissioners continue to sit in GECOM, then they sit there to adumbrate the presentations of the opposition as contained in the policies, preferences and predilections of WIN because WIN is the majority opposition. The caricature will be gigantic because WIN does not want the APNU commissioners to represent WIN in GECOM and the APNU commissioners and the leader of the PNC do not want to talk to the leadership of WIN.

The result of this circus makes Guyana a laughingstock in the region. There is a moral and legal way out. A new election produced a new opposition party. That party, because on numbers, should have two commissioners and by the same criterion, the PNC, having 12 seats, is entitled to one commissioner.

The nation should not accept WIN having all three commissioners. Why should a party with 16 seats have all three and the party with 12 gets nothing? That cannot be right and fair.  The arid, mediocre, ugly reasoning that the GECOM commissioners are there for life is deliberately misleading. We do not have to bring in foreign “experts” to ascertain when permanent is permanent. Permanence is dissolved when the electorate decides that. And the electorate dissolved permanence in September 2025.

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.