On June 18, 2026, a heated political controversy over parliamentary committee representation has emerged in Guyana, centered on a decades-old mathematical seat allocation formula that has left the tiny Forward Guyana Movement (FGM) locked out of all legislative committees. The dispute comes after FGM leader Amanza Walton-Desir, the party’s sole elected representative in the 65-seat National Assembly, was formally deemed ineligible to claim a committee seat, prompting her to accuse the governing People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) of blatant hypocrisy in applying parliamentary rules.
Shortly after Walton-Desir raised public concerns about the process, National Assembly Clerk Sherlock Isaacs released the full text of the long-used formula to both the government and opposition chief whips, confirming the outcome that excludes FGM. Isaacs emphasized in an official statement that the proportional allocation method is not a new policy crafted for this situation, but a framework that has guided committee composition for decades. The system, he explained, allocates committee seats proportionally based on each political party’s total share of seats in the full National Assembly, a requirement explicitly backed by two sections of the National Assembly’s Standing Orders. Standing Order 94(1) mandates that every select committee be constituted to reflect the overall party balance of the full legislature as closely as possible, while Standing Order 94(2) grants the Committee of Selection authority to set the size of each committee unless the assembly votes otherwise. Isaacs also clarified that the committee selection process follows a separate set of rules from the election of the Speaker and Deputy Speaker, which are held via floor vote in a full sitting of the assembly regardless of party size.
The released calculation results confirm that FGM, which holds just 1.54% of assembly seats, does not meet the threshold for a committee seat. But Walton-Desir, a lawyer and former Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister, has pushed back hard against the decision, arguing that the governing PPP/C and its Chief Whip Gail Teixeira are selectively applying the formula to shut out opposition voices. She frames the dispute not as a personal bid for a position, but as a matter of democratic accountability for the Guyanese people.
In her critique, Walton-Desir points to two recent precedents that she says expose the inconsistency of the government’s approach. In 2020, Teixeira nominated Lennox Shuman for Deputy Speaker, despite Shuman’s Liberty and Justice Party only winning 2,657 votes in that year’s general election. The PPP/C used its parliamentary majority to push through Shuman’s election without any reference to a vote-count eligibility threshold. Similarly, in 2023, Teixeira nominated Dr. Asha Kissoon of The New Movement – a small party that won just 244 votes in the 2020 election – for the same Deputy Speaker position, and again the PPP/C majority secured her election without any debate over vote share eligibility. By contrast, Walton-Desir notes that FGM won 4,585 votes in the September 2025 general election, more than both of the previous small-party nominees, yet the same government and same chief whip are now invoking a formal formula to block her from a committee seat. “The hypocrisy is glaring,” she said.
Walton-Desir added that she has already reached out to Foreign Relations Sectoral Committee Chair Primus, offering to lend her expertise to support the committee’s work and any other legislative panel that could benefit from her input. She also pushed back against what she described as the PPP/C’s attempts to consolidate control over the opposition through obstruction, misinformation spread via social media, and abuse of public communication channels. “The work continues, and it will continue in spite of PPP’s attempts to control the opposition,” she emphasized.