标签： Guyana

On Tuesday, May 12, 2026, Guyana’s governing People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) publicly praised a forceful statement from U.S. Republican Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar backing Guyana’s territorial sovereignty amid escalating tensions with Venezuela over a long-running border dispute. Salazar, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, made her remarks on the social platform X one day after Venezuelan interim president Delcy Rodriguez delivered a provocative address to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) during oral hearings on the merits of the border case.

During her Monday appearance before the United Nations’ highest judicial body, Rodriguez doubled down on Venezuela’s rejection of any ICJ ruling on the validity of the 1899 Arbitral Tribunal Award that established the current land boundary between the two South American nations. She insisted that the 1966 Geneva Agreement—signed by Venezuela and the United Kingdom shortly before Guyana gained independence—remains the only legally valid framework for resolving the dispute through bilateral negotiations. Rodriguez warned that any ICJ judgment on the 1899 award would not resolve tensions, stating, “No judgment by this court on the territorial controversy will provide a definitive solution acceptable to both parties. On the contrary, it will exacerbate the differences between the parties, and will lead the parties to entrench themselves in their respective positions, distancing them from the practical, satisfactory and mutually acceptable settlement to which they committed in 1966 by signing the Geneva agreement.”

Salazar pushed back sharply against Rodriguez’s comments and her repeated threats to Guyana’s territorial integrity in her X post. She argued that Rodriguez mistakenly believes she can manipulate U.S. President Donald Trump the same way she and former ousted Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro “tricked and destroyed” Venezuela. “Delcy should stop threatening Guyana and start learning from it,” Salazar wrote. She also warned Rodriguez against sending confidential correspondence to President Trump, emphasizing, “You don’t deal with him through secret letters while trying to steal territory from a free and sovereign nation like Guyana.”

Beyond addressing the border dispute, Salazar commended Guyana’s prudent management of its new oil wealth, noting that in less than a decade, the South American nation has set a stark contrast with Maduro’s regime in Venezuela. “Unlike the Maduro regime, Guyana didn’t rob its people. They managed their oil wealth responsibly, created a sovereign wealth fund, and saw GDP per capita quadruple in just five years,” she added.

As of Tuesday, Guyana’s national government had not issued an official public response to Salazar’s social media statement. The ICJ is on track to issue its binding ruling on the border dispute by the end of 2026 or in the first quarter of 2027, a decision that will shape the future of regional security and territorial claims in northeastern South America.

On Tuesday, 12 May 2026, People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) and opposition bloc A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) leader Aubrey Norton pushed back against growing concerns over the party’s ongoing exodus of members, after the ruling People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) announced the defection of seven current and former opposition-aligned politicians.

The seven new PPPC recruits include three former APNU+AFC Members of Parliament: Rickly Ramsaroop, Shurwayne Holder, and Dinesh Jaiprashad, plus four sitting regional councillors: Ravoldo Birbal, Sheik Yaseen, Prince Holder, and Gangadai Lloyd. Shurwayne Holder, a former PNCR Chairman, had openly signaled his dissatisfaction with the party after being excluded from APNU’s 2025 parliamentary slate following September’s general and regional elections, while Ramsaroop had already split from coalition partner Alliance For Change (AFC) in mid-2025 before briefly aligning with PNCR-led APNU.

In comments to Demerara Waves Online News, Norton framed the latest departures as an expected outcome that did not catch him off guard. “Everybody is free to go to whichever political party they want to go but even Stevie Wonder would have seen that that group was preparing to go to the PPP from the time most of them weren’t seeming to become members of parliament,” he noted. When pressed on whether he had detected disloyalty ahead of candidate nominations, he declined to speculate, saying that leaders can never fully predict the decisions of their members.

This latest wave of defections is part of a years-long trend that has seen more than a dozen opposition politicians leave PNCR and APNU for either the ruling PPPC or the new opposition bloc We Invest in Nationhood. Over less than five years, high-profile departures to the PPPC include James Bond, Jermaine Figueira, Geeta Chandan-Edmond, Richard Van West Charles, Daniel Seeram, and Samuel Sandy, while three other former members have taken executive roles with the new opposition grouping.

Addressing questions about how he will stem further departures, Norton acknowledged that sustained opposition status naturally creates this type of challenge for political parties. “When you’re in opposition for a while that happens. Don’t forget when we were in government- the PNC- many PPP people came and, of course, there are two different things. There is a difference between going to a political party based on principle and ideology and going for whatever personal reasons. You can’t stop people from going for their personal reasons,” he explained.

Norton rejected criticism that the steady “bleeding” of the party is a failure of his leadership, noting that all leadership tenures face challenges. He pushed back against claims he should be held responsible for the defection of figures like former Region Four Chairman Daniel Seeram, saying many of the departing politicians were not selected by him for their current roles. “There are many people I didn’t choose that went so it’s a reality you have to face. We will just continue to organise ourselves and move forward,” he said.

When asked if he was disappointed by the defection of young, rising politician Ravoldo Birbal, in whom he had previously expressed confidence, Norton described Birbal as young and inexperienced, framing his departure as a predictable outcome for less seasoned political actors.

The PPPC’s announcement of the new defections came just one day after former PNCR central executive member Dr. Aubrey Armstrong warned the opposition that it risked losing more supporters if it failed to address the needs of its base. During a commemorative lecture for former PNCR Leader and President Desmond Hoyte, Armstrong urged the party: “You have to take care of your people. You have to find ways of feeding them and so on. If not, you open the door for somebody else to poach them.”

In its official statement announcing the new recruits, the PPPC said the seven politicians requested a meeting with the party’s General Secretary to formalize their shift in affiliation. The group told PPPC leadership they wanted to contribute to Guyana’s ongoing period of unprecedented economic growth and modernization, while advancing the public interest. They praised the ruling party’s open, inclusive governance style, its successful implementation of its policy manifesto, and the tangible improvements it has delivered to communities across the country. The defectors also highlighted the PPPC’s effective economic stewardship, its commitment to inclusive governance that serves all Guyanese regardless of identity, and its proven capacity to sustain national growth.

Notably, the four sitting regional councillors who have switched affiliation cannot be recalled from their posts under current Guyanese electoral law, as no existing statute allows list representatives to remove sitting elected regional councillors after they have taken office.

On May 11, 2026, former senior People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) figure Dr. Aubrey Armstrong delivered the annual Hugh Desmond Hoyte commemorative lecture in Guyana, issuing a stark warning to his former party and laying out enduring leadership lessons drawn from the life and tenure of the nation’s second executive president. The event, held to honor the legacy of the PNCR icon who led the party from 1985 until his death in 2002, came amid a years-long trend of high-profile PNCR members crossing the aisle to join the governing People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC).

Opening his address, which carried the theme “Strategic transformation from charismatic/hero-centered leadership: Some lessons from the leadership journey of Hugh Desmond Hoyte,” Dr. Armstrong centered his first critical warning on the need to prioritize the well-being of the party’s grassroots supporters. He emphasized that failing to deliver tangible support to loyal voters creates an open invitation for rival parties to poach disillusioned members. “You have to take care of your people. You have to find ways of feeding them and so on. If not, you open the door for somebody else to poach them,” he told the assembled audience.

Dr. Armstrong rooted this advice in Hoyte’s own actions immediately after the PNCR’s historic 1992 electoral defeat, the first loss of national power for the party after decades in office. He recalled that within days of the result, Hoyte directed internal party policy experts to draft four landmark policy frameworks, one of which focused on expanding equitable access to credit and mainstream financial services for low-income Guyanese. At the time, Dr. Armstrong explained, Hoyte argued that formal banks and insurance institutions had long systematically excluded working-class Black and Indo-Guyanese citizens, and expanding financial access was core to both supporting the party’s base and advancing national equity. This initiative, Dr. Armstrong noted, grew directly from Hoyte’s core principle that parties must actively care for their supporters immediately after losing power, not only when holding office.

Turning to his core analysis of Hoyte’s leadership style and the lessons it offers modern political actors, Dr. Armstrong argued that effective leadership relies on far more than raw intellectual intelligence. He stressed that emotional intelligence is equally critical: leaders must be able to self-reflect, publicly acknowledge mistakes, and deliberately recruit people with diverse skills — even those who do not personally align with the leader, or hold views that differ from their own. Other core pillars of strong leadership, he added, include creating space for constructive criticism from within, actively listening to grassroots feedback, systematically assessing and managing risk, solving problems pragmatically, and building teams that complement the leader’s gaps in skills and perspective.

Dr. Armstrong specifically highlighted Hoyte’s personal commitment to this model of leadership, noting that the former president never felt threatened by colleagues with stronger expertise in specific areas. Confident in his own decision-making, Hoyte actively broke down long-standing barriers to bring more women and young people into senior party roles, making tough, unpopular choices to prioritize skills and representation over loyalty to existing party elites. Dr. Armstrong also celebrated Hoyte’s “iron will” to stand by difficult decisions, pointing to his landmark work on party reform that opened space for new generations of leaders to rise through the ranks. Above all, he emphasized Hoyte’s uncompromising “radical integrity,” noting that the former leader had zero tolerance for corruption and refused to tolerate any illicit financial connections to criminal activity in party or government affairs.

Drawing another lesson from Hoyte’s observations during a visit to African National Congress (ANC) party branch activities in South Africa, Dr. Armstrong noted that Hoyte came away convinced of the need to strengthen local PNCR party chapters rather than keeping them weak and dependent on national leadership. “He began to understand the need for us to strengthen party groups. And they will talk back to you. When you strengthen them, they will talk back to you,” Dr. Armstrong said, adding that allowing local branches to retain financial and operational independence builds a more resilient party over the long term. Weak grassroots groups, he warned, cannot sustain a party through political struggles.

For context, Hoyte assumed the Guyanese presidency in 1985 following the death of the nation’s first executive president, and won a disputed general election later that year widely condemned by international observers as rigged. Hoyte ultimately conceded to mounting local and international pressure for sweeping electoral reform, leading to the PNCR’s 1992 electoral defeat that ended the party’s decades hold on national power. The PNCR returned to government from 2015 to 2020 as the lead partner in the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) coalition, but lost the 2020 general election and was relegated to the position of second-largest opposition party in parliament following the 2025 national polls.

GEORGETOWN, Guyana – In a press conference held Friday, Aubrey Norton, leader of Guyana’s main opposition party People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR), issued a forceful rebuttal of recent claims raised before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that his party’s 1970s government considered ceding a portion of the disputed Essequibo Region to Venezuela to resolve the long-running border conflict between the two nations.

Norton stressed that the allegation carried by Venezuela’s legal team at the ICJ is entirely unfounded. “This is untrue. When Venezuela made the proposal, it was rejected out of hand by the then PNC government,” Norton told reporters. The border dispute centers on the validity of the 1899 Arbitral Tribunal Award, which established the current boundary between Guyana and Venezuela and grants Guyana sovereignty over the 159,000-square-kilometer Essequibo Region, rich in offshore oil and mineral resources. Venezuela has for decades rejected the 1899 ruling and claims full sovereignty over the territory.

Venezuela’s lead legal representative before the ICJ, international law professor Andreas Zimmermann, told the UN court last week that during 1977 bilateral negotiations, then-Guyanese foreign minister proposed a border adjustment at Punta Playa that would shift the existing borderline from its northwest orientation to a northeast route – a change that would cede territory to Venezuela. Zimmermann also told the court that during 1995 talks, both parties explored creative settlement options that included returning partial control of the disputed territory to Venezuela, including a potential lease arrangement that would leave Guyana administering some portions. He added that former Guyanese President Janet Jagan reaffirmed in an August 1998 letter that the UN Good Officer Process established under the 1966 Geneva Agreement was intended to explore all possible pathways to a negotiated settlement.

Beyond refuting the 1970s concession claim, Norton pushed back against the Guyanese government’s current approach to the dispute, saying while he welcomes U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent pledge to defend Guyana from Venezuelan aggression, Guyana should have pursued a far more robust, proactive independent diplomatic strategy long before now. The comment comes amid Venezuela’s continued refusal to recognize the ICJ’s jurisdiction to rule on the validity of the 1899 award, a stance that has raised regional and international concerns over potential escalation.

Norton outlined that a comprehensive Guyanese strategy should combine public education, targeted political influence, and proactive economic diplomacy that leverages the country’s valuable natural resources to build global support for its sovereignty claim, rather than relying on shallow transactional engagement with international partners. He also called for long-overdue formal recognition of Rashleigh Jackson, Guyana’s foreign minister during the 1970s talks, who Norton says was critical to securing resources for foundational research that underpins Guyana’s legal case. “It is unfair, and it should be rectified,” Norton said of the lack of public recognition for Jackson’s work.

Joining the call for a more proactive public outreach strategy was Dr. David Hinds, co-leader of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), who urged the Guyanese government to launch a large-scale, structured public education campaign to reinforce national awareness that Essequibo is an integral part of Guyana. Hinds noted that even at this late stage, an aggressive social media-focused campaign could not only educate Guyanese citizens about their country’s sovereign claim, but also reach audiences in Venezuela and across the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to build broader regional and international understanding of Guyana’s position.

Hinds added that such public outreach would also create grassroots pressure on the Guyanese government to prioritize protecting the country’s territorial integrity and embed a clear national understanding of the dispute across all segments of society, as tensions over the resource-rich region remain at a decades-long high.