A Servant of the State Has Become an Instrument of Suppression

BY: Staff— Writer

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣.    

When an unelected REO does the work of elected Regional officials, it is not governance — it is the PPP’s velvet-gloved coup against democracy in Region 10.

The photographs tell a story that no government press release will ever dare to tell. A newly appointed Regional Executive Officer — an unelected civil servant, a political appointee who has never once placed his name before the people of Region 10 — is pictured tramping through communities, consulting with residents, inspecting drains, and conducting field visits. On the surface, it looks like diligence. Look closer, and it is something far more sinister.

That is the work of the Regional Chairman and Vice-Chairman. It is constitutionally mandated, democratically earned work — belonging to the elected representatives of the We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) party, who won the Regional Democratic Council of Region 10 fair and square at the 2025 local government elections. The people of Linden and its surrounding communities spoke. They chose their representatives. And the PPP-led government, apparently allergic to the democratic verdict wherever it does not favour them, has decided those representatives simply will not function.

The REO Is Not a Chairman. The Constitution Says So.
Let us be unambiguous about what a Regional Executive Officer is, and what he is not. The REO is the Accounting Officer of the Regional Democratic Council. He is an administrator — appointed, not elected — tasked with managing the financial and administrative machinery of the RDC. His role is to serve the Regional Chairman and the democratically constituted Regional Administration. He is a functionary. He is not a policymaker. He is certainly not a substitute Chairman.

The Regional Democratic Council is a creature of the Constitution of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana. Chapter 7, Article 72 of that Constitution establishes Local Democratic Organs as part of the architecture of participatory governance in this country. The elected Chairman and Vice-Chairman derive their authority directly from the people. No President, no Minister of Local Government, and no hand-picked REO can lawfully strip them of that authority — not without tearing pages from the very Constitution the PPP government swore to uphold.
What is happening in Region 10 is precisely that — a tearing of pages.

Victimization Dressed in a High-Visibility Vest
The PPP’s strategy is not new. It has been deployed before, against other regions, against other opposition-controlled councils. Where they cannot win at the ballot box, they strangle through administration. Resources are withheld. Statutory allocations are delayed. And when all else fails, they empower the REO — their man, their appointee — to simply do the job of the elected officials, rendering the Chairman and Vice-Chairman ceremonial figureheads with titles but no territory.

This is victimization. Not the kind that is loud and obvious — no one is being arrested, no office has been padlocked.

This is the creeping, bureaucratic, suffocating kind of victimization that is designed to frustrate, to humiliate, and ultimately to delegitimize a duly elected Regional Administration in the eyes of its own constituents. If residents see the REO in the field addressing their concerns while their Chairman is nowhere to be found — not because he refuses to serve, but because he is being systematically locked out of the tools and authority needed to serve — what conclusion are they meant to draw?
That is the calculation. That is the intention.

The Government Cannot Have It Both Ways
This administration speaks endlessly of constitutional governance. President Ali invokes the rule of law at every press conference and international forum. Ministers lecture the opposition about respecting state institutions. Yet here, in Region 10, a constitutional body — the Regional Democratic Council — is being functionally neutered by the very government that claims to be democracy’s guardian.

You cannot celebrate the Constitution on Independence Day and desecrate it on every other day of the year. You cannot demand that opposition parties respect electoral outcomes nationally while engineering the collapse of those same outcomes at the regional level. The hypocrisy is not merely breathtaking — it is dangerous. It tells every Guyanese citizen who does not carry a PPP membership card that their vote has a ceiling, that democracy in this country is conditional, and that the Constitution is a document of convenience rather than a covenant of governance.

Region 10 Deserves Better. Guyana Deserves Better. The 592 Guardian calls on the Minister of Local Government and Regional Development to immediately cease and desist from any directive — formal or informal — that empowers the REO of Region 10 to usurp the functions constitutionally belonging to the elected Regional Chairman and Vice-Chairman.

We call on the Integrity Commission and the relevant oversight bodies to investigate whether the conduct of the REO, and those who have directed him, constitutes a breach of the constitutional order.

We call on civil society, the Bar Association of Guyana, and all defenders of democratic governance to speak with one voice: what is happening in Region 10 is not administration. It is occupation.

And we say to the people of Region 10 — your vote was not wasted. Your mandate was real. The attempt to erase it is the clearest possible evidence that those in power fear what you represent: an independent, determined electorate that will not be bought, bullied, or bypassed.

That is a power no REO, however willing, can ever take from you.