OPINION: From ideology to theatre: defections in the age of oil

Last Updated on Friday, 13 June 2025, 9:44 by Denis Chabrol

By Nigel Westmaas

Now that the election season is officially underway, the ruling PPP flush with ExxonMobil revenues is busy putting on a show. It’s the same political theatre we’ve come to expect: ribbon-cuttings for flashy infrastructure, hotels and bridges paraded around like divine gifts, and opposition defections spun as proof of the party’s broad, national appeal. None of them are new. These are standard plays from the global election handbook.

The PPP is selling these defections as signs of its transformation into a multi-ethnic, all-embracing government. In truth, it’s just old-school political maneuvering dressed up in the language of unity. Guyana has seen this script before. Poaching or co-opting opposition figures is a ritual performed with every election cycle. It’s predictable.

Party-aligned media often present each new recruit as an ideological convert, someone struck by the light of the PPP’s vision. Most defections, however, don’t happen because of deep convictions. They happen for the same reason: those defecting will presumably enjoy access to protection, influence, and, often enough, cash.

In the past a long line of PPP figures who crossed over to the PNC, among them: Mohamed Saffee, Ignatius Charlie, Lawrence Mann, Seelo Baichan, Leonard Durant, Edgar Ambrose, George Henry, George Bowman, Harry Lall, Lallbachan Lallbahadur, Edwin Victor James, Vincent Teekah, Lilian Branco, Halim Majeed, Zaheerudeen, Ivan Remington and of course, the star in the PPP firmament, Ranji Chandisingh. Some were rewarded. Others faded into irrelevance. Most were used, then discarded. Lallbachan Lallbahadur had to move out of his former village on the West Coast after his defection under threat from PPP supporters.

But at least some of the PPP defections to the PNC might have been out of ideological motives as there was no oil economy then. And several of the Afro Guyanese supporters of the PPP who defected (and those who remained) were “organic”, that is, those who joined in the tough days and were constrained by risk, not reward. Whatever you think of their politics, their decision wasn’t transactional. It was ideological and moral. Their support came at a time when the PPP was down and out, not flushed with oil wealth.

Today’s wave of defectors looks very different. They tend to fall into two camps.

The first group is the allegedly compromised. These are people with alleged skeletons, financial, legal, or otherwise. They cross the floor not out of conviction, but self-preservation and/or fear. Being in the ruling party offers them shelter. In Guyana’s weakened institutions where the police, civil service, and most oversight bodies answer to political power it’s safer inside the tent. Aside from the judiciary, there’s little independence left.

The second group of defectors are the grifters. These are opportunists drawn in by the flood of oil money. They bring no ideology, no public spirit, no real history, just ambition. For them, politics is a hustle. A meeting with a high-ranking official or a whisper of a deal in the Exxon-fueled economy is enough to make them switch sides. At the place of recruitment or conversion, a rum shop or fancy dinner they are told “Doan worry, buddy. Yuh all right wid we.”

Grift comes in many forms: chasing contracts, securing jobs, buying influence, or simply gaining access. Some of these defectors try to reframe themselves as principled rebels or misunderstood victims, but in the end, it’s not about principle. It’s about positioning.

So the next time a defector is embraced on stage, showered with praise, and hailed as a visionary, look closer. This isn’t about transformation. It’s a transaction of the most devious kind in a broken society. Even President Ali has acknowledged, in a rare moment of candor last November in his ill-fated, never to be repeated, early morning rant against ministers and contractors, that there was a “systemic cultural problem” in Guyana.

The PPP’s entire political strategy is built around spectacle over substance. Token African Guyanese, often former PNC members, are placed on the slate with great fanfare. They’re not asked to account publicly for their past roles; that’s not the point. The show isn’t driven by principle, it’s driven by optics. None of the defectors can make even a whiff of criticism of ruling parties policies, past and present, but are expected to frame their defection only in terms of PNC rigging but not for instance the public knowledge that African Guyanese are for the most part closed off from the national patrimony with their historical role is increasingly being framed as emerging from a PPP narrative and only through PPP largesse.

In a deeply plural society like Guyana, national unity can’t just mean putting different faces on the same political machine. It can’t be reduced to symbolic inclusion or temporary alliances built for election season. Unity must engage directly with inequality, mistrust, and past exclusion. Without that engagement, what’s called “unity” becomes little more than choreography, people standing together for the photo while pursuing very different goals behind the scenes.

When the PPP presents unity as an effortless outcome as something achieved through image or symbolism rather than structural change, they strip the term of its power.

Meanwhile, the political party in government quietly rewrites its own history, abandoning its working-class ideological roots for a new gospel of money, Exxon, and private-sector dominance, with its corollary corruption. This is the foundation for a new elite, one defined not by ideas or social commitment, but by wealth and proximity to power.

And this tells you everything you need to know about the direction Guyana’s politics is heading.

(The author has since removed HJM Hubbard’s name. He publicly supported Burnham at times but not at the level of crossing the floor. Dr Westmaas regrets the error and apologises for the inclusion of Hubbard in the listing).