The Empty Chamber and the Half-Represented Nation

 The Empty Chamber and the Half-Represented Nation

A Lesson in Inclusion Guyana Refuses to Learn

When We Invest in Nationhood General Secretary and MP Odessa Primus met a visiting delegation from Germany’s Bundestag, she asked a fair question: why were APNU and the Forward Guyana Movement not included? She praised the German parliamentarians for travelling as one delegation despite representing rival parties. She was right to do so.

But she stopped short of the indictment that mattered most.

Germany’s example exposed not merely the absence of two opposition parties from one meeting in Georgetown. It exposed a deeper national failure: Guyana’s democracy is increasingly performed in selective settings—diplomatic receptions, party meetings, press statements, and foreign engagements—while the institution created to make representation real, the National Assembly, is allowed to languish.

Four Sittings, One Indictment

The official record is devastating. Guyana’s Thirteenth Parliament held only four sittings in its first 299 days: November 3, 2025; January 26, 2026; February 2, 2026; and June 5, 2026. Four occasions in nearly ten months for 65 elected representatives to question ministers, debate the budget, expose corruption, defend constituents, and check executive power.

That is not a Parliament. That is a monument to avoidance.

And here lies the uncomfortable truth Primus did not confront: opposition MPs cannot credibly demand inclusion in a foreign delegation while remaining absent from the principal arena of national representation. A salary is paid to represent people, not merely to hold a title. If opposition members choose not to advocate for sittings of  the National Assembly, they must publicly state the specific grievance, the demand, and the conditions under which they will return. Anything less is not resistance. It is abdication dressed up as principle.

Resources Without a Stage

Primus also highlighted Germany’s public support for opposition parliamentary staff. Again, the point is valid. Opposition MPs need researchers, legal advisers, communications support, and administrative capacity to compete with a resourced executive.

But she framed the demand as though resources alone would enable the opposition’s “work program.” That argument collapses under its own weight. The work begins in Parliament. Staff can draft questions, motions, audits, and briefs—but only if there are sittings at which those instruments can be tabled and debated.

Asking for German-style support while Guyana’s legislature sits four times in thirteen months is like demanding a better-equipped courtroom while refusing to enter the courthouse. The first demand must be a functioning Parliament. The second is the resources to make parliamentary work effective.

The Foreign Face of Exclusion

Primus’s most serious omission, however, concerned Guyana’s own international representation. She praised the Germans for cross-party inclusion but failed to call out the fact that Guyana routinely sends delegations to international parliamentary and elected-representative forums as though the opposition does not exist.

The evidence is recent and public. Guyana’s delegation to the 153rd Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly in Arusha, Tanzania, from October 5 to 9, 2026, was led by Speaker Manzoor Nadir and included government ministers Vindhya Persaud and Warren Kwame McCoy, along with a parliamentary official. No opposition MP was listed.

That delegation spoke for Guyana at a global assembly of nearly 700 parliamentarians from more than 130 countries—an assembly devoted to peace, democracy, human rights, and sustainable development. Yet the voters who elected WIN, APNU, and Forward Guyana Movement parliamentarians had no opposition voice in the room.

This is not representation. It is partisan monopoly wearing the national flag.

A Government Cannot Own the Nation’s Voice

A parliamentary delegation is not a PPP-C delegation. It is Guyana’s delegation. When only ruling-party MPs are selected to represent the country abroad, the government converts a national platform into a partisan reward system.

The consequences are not symbolic. International forums shape alliances, scrutiny, funding relationships, human-rights pressure, climate negotiations, and democratic norms. An opposition representative may raise issues a minister would prefer to leave unspoken: corruption, press freedom, Indigenous rights, extractive-sector accountability, judicial independence, or the hollowing out of parliamentary oversight.

Excluding opposition MPs does not merely deny them a plane ticket. It denies their constituents a channel of international representation. It tells thousands of Guyanese that their concerns are legitimate only when filtered through the governing party.

The Prosecutorial Charge

Let the charge be stated without euphemism.

The government bears primary responsibility for convening a functioning National Assembly and for ensuring that national delegations reflect the whole Parliament, not one party’s caucus. But the opposition is not without fault. If it believes Parliament is being manipulated, it must say so in the chamber, on the record, and before the public. If it believes its exclusion from international forums is unjust, it must name that exclusion whenever the opportunity arises.

Primus had that opportunity. She had German parliamentarians before her—visitors from a system where governing and opposition members share the same delegation. She could have said: “Guyana must practice at home and abroad the inclusion you have shown us today.”

She did not.

That omission matters. A parliamentarian who praises inclusion in a foreign delegation while declining to confront Guyana’s exclusionary practices—abroad and in international forums—has chosen diplomacy over duty. The public should not confuse courtesy with courage.

What Must Be Demanded

The remedy is not complicated. It requires political will and public pressure.

• The National Assembly must adopt and publish a minimum sitting calendar, with regular ordinary sittings each month.
• Opposition parties must either participate fully or publicly state the precise procedural grievance and the condition for ending their withdrawal.
• International parliamentary delegations must include all parties in the National Assembly, proportionate to their seats.
• The Speaker, not the governing party, should administer a transparent selection process for foreign delegations.
• The composition, mandate, cost, and public report of every international delegation must be published before and after travel.
• Opposition MPs must receive equitable institutional support for research, legal, communications, and constituency work, subject to audit.

The Standard Guyana Must Meet

Germany’s delegation offered Guyana a mirror. It showed that rival parties can share a national platform without surrendering their politics. It showed that opposition participation is not a favor granted by a governing party; it is a structural feature of democratic representation.

Guyana failed the test.

A Parliament that sits four times in thirteen months cannot scrutinize. Opposition MPs who absent themselves from the chamber cannot fully represent. A government that sends only its own members to international forums cannot claim to speak for the nation. And an opposition leader who sees these failures but names only the most convenient one is not practicing inclusion—she is practicing selective outrage.

The people of Guyana did not elect parliamentarians to attend receptions, collect per diems, issue statements, or praise foreign models from a distance. They elected them to work. The work begins in Parliament. It continues in international forums. And it demands that every Guyanese voter—government supporter or opposition supporter—be represented by the whole of their country, not merely by the party that happens to hold power.

—The Board