When Popularity Begins to Challenge the Guardrails

592 GUARDIAN ACCOUNTABILITY INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM GUYANA

When Popularity Begins to Challenge the Guardrails

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OPINION BY: Hem Kumar September 2026

There was something politically revealing about the September 24 diaspora gathering for President Irfaan Ali and the PPP/C in New York.

The event attracting  a major outpouring of Guyanese from NY, other states in the USA ,Canada and as far as Florida, began late. Attendees waited outside the venue in chilly conditions as organizers managed entry under security protocols, explaining that a large crowd could not be allowed to accumulate indoors before the President arrived. Some were understandably frustrated. But many stayed. The crowd built. The anticipation held.

That alone does not make a political argument. Crowds gather for many reasons: party loyalty, curiosity, access, networking, national pride, opposition, spectacle, or a genuine desire to hear from a head of government.

But what became clear in conversations with those waiting was that President Ali has something more than ordinary support among sections of the diaspora. He has a constituent that is alive, emotional, invested, and increasingly personal in its devotion.

Several people interviewed offered exceptionally generous praise. Some described him as Guyana’s best president. Others argued that he deserves a third term. When reminded that the Constitution imposes a two-term presidential limit, the response from some was immediate: “change the Constitution.”

Unfortunately, these same individuals along with everyone else who attended to either  express their support or voice their concerns were not afforded an opportunity as the format of the forum was uniquely structured around  any such mechanism.

 What the format tells us

There was no town hall. No microphone passed through the crowd for questions. No moment, structured or improvised, where an attendee — supporter or otherwise — could press the President on policy, on term limits, on anything at all. What existed instead was a social occasion: music, drinks, food, photographs.

That is a fact about the event’s structure, not a claim about anyone’s intentions. But it is a fact worth stating plainly, because of what it means in combination with everything else: a gathering large enough to draw travelers from two countries, animated enough to produce spontaneous talk of constitutional change, and structured in a way that built in no mechanism for the President to be questioned by the very people expressing that sentiment in front of him.

That is where this discussion must begin.

There is nothing wrong with citizens admiring a president. There is nothing undemocratic about believing that a government has performed well, that a leader has represented the country effectively, or that a president has brought a new energy to the office. Citizens are entitled to praise leaders, defend them, campaign for them, and reward them at the ballot box.

But democracy must become concerned when admiration for a leader evolves into the belief that constitutional safeguards should be removed to accommodate that leader.

Guyana’s presidential term limit exists for a reason. A person elected President after the year 2000 may be re-elected only once. The two-term limit is not a restraint designed for failed, unpopular, or ineffective presidents. Elections themselves can deal with those leaders. Term limits exist for leaders who are popular, powerful, resource-rich, deeply connected, and capable of building a political structure around themselves.

They exist precisely because popularity can become intoxicating—not only for the leader, but for the followers who begin to see one man as irreplaceable.

That is the point Guyana must confront honestly.

President Ali’s political stock is clearly rising. He has returned to office with an expanded parliamentary mandate. The PPP-C now holds 36 seats in the National Assembly, while WIN has 16 seats, APNU has 12, and Forward Guyana Movement holds one. The governing party’s victory, combined with the weakness and fragmentation of the opposition, gives the administration considerable room to set the political agenda.

But Ali’s strength is not confined to Parliament.

He has become the most visible face of Guyana’s oil-era ambitions. He is the President who travels, speaks internationally, meets investors, courts the diaspora, promotes infrastructure, presents Guyana as a country on the rise, and projects a modern image of national confidence. Whether one agrees with every policy of his administration or not, it is impossible to deny that Ali has become a major political asset to the PPP-C.

The diaspora gathering demonstrated that this asset is no longer merely institutional. It is personal.

That carries consequences.

A President who commands genuine public enthusiasm can become more powerful than the party machinery that elevated him. He can build a direct relationship with citizens at home and abroad. He can develop personal political capital that does not always depend on the approval of party executives, Central Committees, Cabinet colleagues, or traditional gatekeepers.

This is where the Ali–Jagdeo question becomes unavoidable.

Guyana’s Constitution makes the President the supreme executive authority. The President chairs  Cabinet, appoints ministers, represents the state, and holds the constitutional authority to direct the executive arm of government. Yet the PPP-C is not merely a collection of officeholders. It is a disciplined party with a long organizational history, a Central Committee, an Executive Committee, deep political networks, and a General Secretary in Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo who remains one of the most consequential political actors in the country.

This produces an unusual governing arrangement.

Ali possesses the constitutional authority of the presidency. Jagdeo possesses long-standing organizational authority within the party. One commands the office of state. The other commands deep experience, political networks, party machinery, and a strategic role as the central figure head  of the ruling establishment.

For a time, such an arrangement can work efficiently. A president and party leader can operate as partners. One can provide public stature and executive authority; the other can provide political organization, electoral discipline, strategy, and institutional continuity.

But every dual-power arrangement contains the possibility of tension.

The more President Ali develops an independent public constituency, the more he becomes politically significant beyond the structure that produced him. The more his name, image, international profile, diaspora support, and executive authority grow, the more the political equation inside the PPP-C may change.

That does not mean a rupture has occurred. It does not prove that a clash is underway. It does not establish that every policy disagreement, procurement question, appointment, or Cabinet debate reflects a personal conflict between the President and the Vice President.

Such assertions require evidence, not gossip.

But political analysis must be allowed to identify structural realities before they become public crises. And the structural reality is clear: a second-term president with growing popularity, control of the constitutional executive, and a personal support base can eventually become too politically substantial to remain merely the political product of another figure’s party machinery.

This is not only an Ali question. It is a Guyana question.

Guyana has lived through the dangers of party supremacy and maximum leader syndrome before. The Burnham era taught this country the grave consequences of allowing party and leader  dominance to eclipse the state, weaken institutions, and reduce public governance to the will of a narrow political center.

The present moment is not a copy of that era. Guyana still holds competitive elections. Opposition parties remain represented in Parliament, whenever the doors are opened .The courts function. The Constitution remains in force. The media remains contested, diverse, and active. The country is not under a formal doctrine of party paramountcy.

But we should not make the opposite mistake and assume that democracy is secure merely because elections are held.

Democratic erosion rarely announces itself with a single decree. It grows through habits: the normalization of unchecked executive authority; the blurring of state business and party interest; the elevation of loyalty over scrutiny; the treatment of criticism as disloyalty; the use of resources to consolidate political advantage; and the growing public belief that one leader is so essential that the rules must be changed for him.

The issue is not whether President Ali is popular. He plainly is among important sections of the Guyanese public and diaspora. The issue is whether Guyana is cultivating a political culture in which popularity becomes a license for permanence. I would call  it “ a competitive electoral democracy with a dominant-party governing culture.”

That is the danger of populism when it is left unexamined.

Populism tells the public that the leader alone understands them, that institutions are obstacles, that critics are enemies of progress, and that constitutional limits are technical inconveniences standing in the way of national advancement. It thrives on the seductive argument that if a leader is delivering development, attracting investment, building roads, speaking confidently for the country, and commanding loyalty, then why should anyone object to keeping him in office for as long as the public desires?

The answer is simple: because no democracy should depend on the virtue, popularity, or goodwill of one individual.

Guyana’s oil wealth makes this question more urgent, not less. Oil has given the Government unprecedented fiscal power. It has expanded the scale of public projects, contracts, infrastructure, state spending, international engagement, and political expectations. In such an environment, incumbency is not an abstract advantage. It can become a formidable machine.

The leader at the center of that machine can appear larger than the party, larger than Parliament, and larger than the constitutional restraints meant to preserve balance. That is why citizens who admire President Ali should be the first to defend the two-term limit, not the first to demand its removal.

If Ali’s record is as strong as his admirers believe, then let that record become the foundation for institutional continuity, better governance, stronger public systems, an improved PPP-C, and a new generation of capable leadership. Let his legacy be the strengthening of Guyana’s democracy—not the weakening of its guardrails.

The same standard must apply to every party.

WIN cannot survive as a serious national alternative merely by exploiting public anger or presenting itself as the answer to PPP-C dominance. Its 16 parliamentary seats represent an important disruption of the old political order, but a movement is not yet a governing institution. It must build structure, transparency, internal democracy, policy competence, and a leadership culture that does not simply replace one form of political worship with another.

APNU, reduced to 12 seats, must also confront its crisis honestly. It cannot recover by behaving as though the political landscape has not. Its decline opened the space that WIN filled. If it cannot reform, reconnect, and offer credible leadership, it will continue to surrender the role of principal opposition to newer and less tested forces.

The PPP-C, meanwhile, faces its own test: whether it will use its mandate to strengthen democratic institutions or to deepen a political culture where party, government, leadership, and state resources increasingly appear inseparable.

Guyana does not need weaker leaders. It needs stronger institutions.It does not need less ambition from its President. It needs more accountability from every center of power.

It does not need a politics built around the question of who can remain in office longest. It needs a politics built around whether the Constitution, Parliament, Cabinet, courts, procurement systems, regulators, media, civil society, and citizens can remain strong enough to question anyone.

The diaspora gathering in New York was, in that sense, more than a meet-and-greet. The largest I have witnessed in over four decades in New York. And it was a clear political signal.

It showed that President Ali has an active and passionate following. It showed that he can generate anticipation and loyalty beyond Guyana’s shores. It showed that supporters are prepared to speak of him not simply as a President, but as an indispensable national figure.

That should not be ignored. Neither should it be feared irrationally. But it must be understood.

Guyana’s future cannot rest on whether one leader remains popular enough to stay. It must rest on whether the country is mature enough to ensure that no leader—however gifted, admired, connected, or successful—ever becomes larger than the constitutional democracy he was elected to serve.