Dear Editor,
As the dust slowly settles after the ‘blusami’ that swept across America on Tuesday, November 3rd, one thing is clear: democracy, as it relates to people’s power, is still alive in the United States of America.
Besides the jaw-dropping, adjective-laced verdict of rebuke, repudiation, and rejection, the post-mortem process is still unfolding, with the number one issue that prodded Americans to pinch their noses and vote Democrats being the economy, aka affordability.
Back in the 1992 U.S elections, it was former Democratic strategist, James Carville, who coined the phrase, ‘It’s the economy, stupid,” in an admonition to Democratic Presidential candidate Bill Clinton’s campaign team to keep the message focused on the U.S. economic recession, which was taking place on Republican President George H.W. Bush’s watch. Bill Clinton’s message resonated and he went on to capture 370 electoral votes, making ‘George H.W’ a one-term President.
Ironically, America had been down an almost similar road before with almost identical circumstances that ushered in almost identical outcomes. At the start of the Great Depression in 1929, America was led by a Republican President named Herbert Hoover. Not only did many Americans reportedly blame Hoover for the dire straits of the economy, but they angrily cited a lack of government initiatives to intervene and stop or turn the tide.
A Democrat named Franklin D. Roosevelt, ran for President in the 1932 elections with a promise of three Rs: Relief, Recovery, and Reforms, under his New Deal policies that resonated with voters. This, my fellow Guyanese, was what led to Roosevelt’s landslide victory.
Recapping the circumstances leading to the 1992 and the 1932 landslide victories is key to understanding what America was experiencing in the run-up to and the last three days since the 2026 ‘blusami’. For Guyanese, at home and abroad, there are teachable lessons from Americans who channeled their frustration and anger into votes last Tuesday.
Besides the economy, there were other issues associated with Donald Trump’s policies and politics that irked many Americans, with government corruption being right up there with the Iran war. Americans refused to sit and watch their cost-of-living soar (thanks to tariffs and the war) while President Trump, his family and associates in the business sector reaped billions of dollars in profits. As a result, affordability became twinned with accountability as hot button issues that drove Americans to the polls. Republicans voted Democrat out of sheer desperation.
After twenty-five years of pervasive corruption under the Jagdeo-led PPP, it is up to Guyanese at home, with encouragement from abroad, to start looking at changing the narrative in Guyana where the fastest growing economy in the world has leaders who are growing wealthy while fooling ordinary Guyanese into believing they, too, are growing wealthy.
The latest statistics on poverty levels in Guyana range widely between 18% and 58% depending on whose metrics you use, but while 40% might be more standard, it’s still too high in a country of less than a million, and even as billions of dollars in contracts keep going out under the guise of development.
So, where exactly have the billions of dollars in oil money gone since 2020? After waiting for over five years for the Public Accounts Committee to review the Auditor-General’s audited accounts presented to the House Speaker, it now appears as though the government is moving to hide the facts and figures here by fast-tracking a glossing over of public spending. By ‘rush-passing’ the figures, many Guyanese may not be able to distinguish between monies taken from the Consolidated Fund and the Natural Resource Fund or determine if there was value-for-money spending.
Concerned Guyanese should always demand a proper and full accounting of public spending, whether it’s with help from the Auditor-General or the Public Accounts Committee or Guyanese professionals like Christopher Ram and Anand Goolsarran. But the taxpayer-funded Opposition parties – WIN, PNC and FGM – also have a vital and vigorous role to play here by keeping facts and figures front and centre in the independent media and by all means necessary. The PPP can no longer be trusted with maintaining accountability and transparency guardrails.
In America, even the Democrats who appeared as roundly despised in many recent polls, became the go-to alternative to stop a self-absorbed Trump and a ‘sellout Republican party’. American voters concluded, “The enemy of my enemy is now my friend,” even if out of sheer convenience. In Guyana, even the demoralized combined Opposition remains the taxpayer-funded go-to alternative to help stop the self-absorbed Jagdeo and a sellout PPP that ceased being the Jagan PPP of the people, for the people and by the people.
109,066 Guyanese, mostly disillusioned and angry youths, looked at Ali, Jagdeo, Norton and Azruddin on September 1, 2025 and chose Azruddin to help start the wheels of change they want to see. So, when Jagdeo recently urged Norton and the PNC to work with the PPP to avoid extinction, it was not about the extinction of Guyanese, but the extinction of a select group of politicians who see government as the main source of great personal wealth. The ‘corruptocrats’ don’t care about Guyanese fighting affordability and accountability issues, which is why Guyanese have to fight for what’s theirs.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
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