WIN Accuses Ali Govt Of Weaponising State Institutions Against Opposition

By Mark DaCosta- Guyana’s main opposition party, We Invest in Nationhood (WIN), has accused the Irfaan Ali administration of using state machinery to hound elected opposition legislators. In a statement issued from Georgetown on 13 November 2026, its General Secretary, Odessa Primus, MP, argued that the pressure on the Leader of the Opposition and his parliamentary colleagues threatens the constitutional order, not just one party. She also appealed to civil society, foreign embassies and regional bodies to speak up before, in her words, history passes judgment.

M.s Primus framed the matter as bigger than party politics. She described what is happening as:

“a direct assault on the constitutional foundations of Guyana’s democracy”

and accused the government of the:

“weaponisation of state institutions”

against the people’s chosen representatives. She reminded the nation that more than 109,000 citizens voted WIN into the National Assembly with 16 seats in the September 2025 elections, a mandate she says was given so that robust oversight could be exercised on the people’s behalf.

The statement lands at a tense moment. Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed has been in custody since the end of October. Reports indicate he was arrested on 28 October after releasing government surveillance footage, and that on 30 October the Sparendaam Magistrate’s Court refused him bail and remanded him, with police constable Ryan Green, until 24 November. The charge falls under the Cybercrime Act, and he has not been convicted. The Ali administration has not accepted that this amounts to persecution, and it is entitled to say that the courts, not politicians, are testing the allegations.

The episode follows other clashes. Mr. Mohamed was previously detained in mid-October after gunfire near the Georgetown home of a senior Special Branch officer, who is reportedly a witness in the separate United States extradition proceedings against him and his father, Nazar Mohamed. Washington has indicted both Mohameds in Florida on allegations including money laundering, bribery and tax evasion, and the US Treasury sanctioned him in 2024. He is presumed innocent in every matter. Those proceedings are also due back before the court on 24 November, so the opposition’s grievance sits alongside serious allegations that the law must resolve.

Even so, Primus insists the pattern amounts to:

“relentless harassment, arbitrary detention, and exclusion from legislative proceedings”

and warns that Guyana risks sliding towards authoritarianism. She says:

“electoral victory does not confer absolute power”

and she placed “non-negotiable pillars of a free society” at the centre of her case: parliamentary immunity, freedom of political expression and the right of the opposition to hold the executive to account. Her argument rests on a distinction she wants the public to keep in view. A person may face criminal process like any other citizen, she suggests, yet the way a state treats the holder of a constitutional office still matters to everyone.

Supporters have taken that message to the streets. Protests flared outside a Georgetown court in early November, with reported scuffles with the police, and scores gathered outside Parliament on 11 November to demand Mohamed’s release. That same day, his 24-year-old sister was reportedly sworn in as a WIN member of the National Assembly, filling a vacancy.

The statement is as much a plea to outsiders as a rebuke to the government. Primus challenged rights advocates with the charge that:

“selective outrage undermines the very principles of justice”

and urged them to speak plainly. She reminded the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and the European Union that they have long preached institutional integrity in Guyana, and called on CARICOM to honour its commitments on political pluralism and the rule of law. Her warning was blunt:

“silence is complicity”.

WIN’s demands are specific. It wants an end to “political persecution and intimidation of opposition parliamentarians”, full respect for the rights of the Office of the Leader of the Opposition, and a return of “genuine democratic norms in the National Assembly”. Ms Primus closed with a line meant to echo beyond the chamber:

“History will judge”

those who engineer democratic erosion and those who watch it happen.

For ordinary Guyanese, the stakes extend well beyond one man’s fate. A young oil-rich nation is learning whether its institutions can handle a powerful opposition and serious criminal allegations at once, and do so fairly, openly and within the Constitution. The 24 November court dates will be an early test of that.