Winning Is Not Governing: Why Guyana Must Rebuild the State Before It Changes Hands

Winning Is Not Governing: Why Guyana Must Rebuild the State Before It Changes Hands

OPINION BY : Hem Kumar November 2026

The United States’ account of its Venezuela transition strategy contains a lesson Guyana cannot afford to ignore: an election alone does not produce democracy. If the courts, electoral commission, security services, constitutional commissions and senior bureaucracy remain politically aligned with the outgoing regime, a newly elected government may inherit the title of power without the ability to govern.

That warning applies with uncomfortable force to Guyana. The PPP/C has presided over a system in which elections occur, but the surrounding architecture of state power can make alternation politically hazardous. The question is not simply whether an opposition party can win. It is whether, after winning, it could appoint, discipline, investigate, legislate, prosecute, command, reform or even survive inside institutions built and staffed under the incumbent party.

The Venezuela lesson

In the reported State Department briefing, the official’s central argument was that Venezuela could not hold a credible election merely by holding one. The existing Supreme Justice Tribunal and National Electoral Council had to first be replaced or fundamentally reformed, because those bodies could determine candidacy, validate results and insulate the regime from defeat.

The official also warned that even a victorious opposition could fail if it inherited a hostile security apparatus, a collapsed economy and institutions staffed by loyalists of the previous order. The point was blunt: a democratic transition requires not just a change of president, but a change in the machinery through which the state exercises power.

Guyana should not copy Venezuela’s crisis, but it should study the underlying principle. Elections are the visible event; institutional control is the invisible continuity.

GECOM: the first guardrail

The Carter Center’s assessment of Guyana’s 2025 election found that GECOM’s structure leaves it dominated by commissioners aligned with the two historic parties, effectively excluding smaller parties from representation. It also flagged campaign-finance weaknesses, unequal media access, alleged use of state resources and the political division of the commission itself.

That matters because GECOM is not merely a vote-counting body. It helps define the voter list, manages the machinery of polling, certifies results and shapes public confidence in the entire electoral process. When the commission is perceived as an extension of partisan competition rather than a neutral technical institution, every result becomes contestable—whether or not irregularities are proven.

The 2025 election illustrated the danger. Opposition commissioners walked out of a GECOM meeting, ballot-access disputes reached the courts, and the opposition later alleged manipulation and sought a forensic audit or rerun. Whatever one concludes about those specific claims, the deeper problem is structural: Guyana’s electoral architecture does not command broad, cross-party confidence.

A future opposition government that wins under such a system would immediately face the same dilemma as Venezuela’s hypothetical transition: govern with an electoral body it does not trust, or attempt reform while its opponents control the narrative of “stealing the election.”

The judiciary and constitutional commissions

Guyana’s Constitution assigns major appointments and disciplinary powers to commissions such as the Judicial Service Commission, Police Service Commission and Public Service Commission. In theory, these bodies insulate the state from executive capture. In practice, their legitimacy depends on appointments being timely, balanced and genuinely independent.

That independence is currently under strain. The Police Service Commission had not been reconstituted as of late October 2026, leaving senior police disciplinary authority in constitutional limbo even as government ministers publicly debated the fate of a senior officer. Meanwhile, the President has ordered fresh appointments to three constitutional commissions whose terms expired, while the Attorney General rejected claims that government controls the commissions or judiciary.

The controversy around judicial appointments and the Opposition Leader’s extradition case has further sharpened public concern. Azruddin Mohamed’s lawyers have sought the recusal of Caribbean Court of Justice President Justice Winston Anderson from proceedings involving them, amid allegations concerning judicial appointments and leaked judicial correspondence. These are allegations, not established findings, but they demonstrate how quickly confidence in judicial neutrality can erode when appointment processes appear politically entangled.

For an incoming opposition administration, this creates a practical trap. It cannot simply dismiss judges, commissioners or senior officers without triggering a constitutional and international legitimacy crisis. Yet if it leaves them in place, it may find that the state’s legal, disciplinary and administrative machinery continues to operate according to the previous government’s political logic.

Security, bureaucracy and the deep state

The most difficult layer is not constitutional on paper; it is administrative in practice. Guyana’s police, army, intelligence structures, ministries, statutory bodies, procurement systems and senior public service contain networks of appointments, promotions, contracts and loyalties accumulated over decades of PPP/C governance.

This is not an argument for purges. Purges would be dangerous, legally reckless and likely to deepen polarization. It is an argument for a deliberate, transparent transition programme: immediate publication of senior appointments and contracts, independent audits of key agencies, merit-based reconstitution of commissions, protection for professional public servants, and clear rules preventing political victimisation in either direction.

The opposition’s own weakness

The hard truth is that the opposition is not presently positioned to manage such a transition. The 2025 election broke the old two-party order: We Invest in Nationhood won 16 seats and displaced APNU as the largest opposition bloc, while APNU obtained 12 seats. That fragmentation may reflect genuine democratic pluralism, but it also weakens the opposition’s capacity to negotiate institutional reform, coordinate parliamentary strategy or present a credible alternative government.

The current Leader of the Opposition, Azruddin Mohamed, is also embroiled in a high-stakes United States extradition case involving allegations of fraud and money laundering. His legal team has challenged the extradition process and sought the recusal of the CCJ president from related proceedings. Whether he is ultimately vindicated or not, the case creates a serious international credibility problem.

If Mohamed were to win national office while under active extradition proceedings, foreign partners would face an immediate dilemma. They could not easily treat his government as a straightforward democratic alternative while its leader was contesting serious criminal allegations in foreign courts. That does not mean due process should be denied to him; it means the opposition must confront the political consequence of placing its transition hopes in a leader whose legal exposure can be used to delegitimize the entire democratic project.

What must change before power changes

Guyana needs a transition agenda that begins now, not after an election victory. At minimum, it should include:

• Electoral reform: a professionally run, depoliticized GECOM with credible voter-list management, transparent counting, campaign-finance enforcement and representation beyond the two dominant parties.
• Constitutional-commission reform: timely, transparent and balanced appointments to the Police Service Commission, Public Service Commission, Judicial Service Commission and other bodies, with clear qualification criteria and public hearings.
• Judicial independence: protection of judicial appointments from executive influence, publication of appointment criteria, and a credible mechanism for investigating allegations of political interference.
• Security-sector professionalism: clear civilian oversight, merit-based promotion, independent disciplinary processes and a public commitment that the police and army serve the Constitution rather than a party.
• State-resource neutrality: enforceable rules against the use of public funds, state media, government programs and public contracts for partisan advantage.
• Opposition cohesion: a common democratic platform among WIN, APNU, the Forward Guyana Movement and other forces, focused not merely on removing the PPP/C but on rebuilding the state that would remain after it.

The stakes for Guyana

The PPP/C may argue that it wins elections and therefore commands democratic legitimacy. But the Venezuela briefing identifies the flaw in that argument: legitimacy is not created only at the ballot box. It is sustained by institutions that allow the loser to accept defeat, the winner to govern, the public to obtain redress, and the security forces to obey constitutional authority rather than partisan loyalty.

Guyana’s danger is subtler than Venezuela’s. It may not require a dramatic rupture to hollow out democracy. It can happen through delayed commissions, politicized appointments, unequal media access, a divided electoral commission, selective law enforcement and a bureaucracy quietly organized around the ruling party.

If the opposition ever unseats the PPP/C without first demanding institutional reform, it may discover that it has won an election but not the state. And if the PPP/C continues to treat every institution as an instrument of partisan survival, it may discover that it has preserved power while destroying the legitimacy that makes power worth having.

Guyana does not need a foreign power to design its transition. It needs its own political class to understand the lesson now being articulated about Venezuela: build the democratic architecture before the election, or risk discovering—too late—that an election was never enough.