GEORGETOWN – A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) met with the European Union Delegation in Georgetown yesterday, seizing on the EU Election Observation Mission’s damning Final Report, which found that state-funded media devoted as much as 98 per cent of its election coverage to the governing PPP/C during the 2025 campaign.
The meeting quickly turned into a forceful appeal for sweeping reforms, with APNU arguing that the findings lay bare what the party has long claimed: that publicly funded broadcasters acted as virtual extensions of the PPP/C campaign, not impartial national institutions.
According to EU observers, state outlets such as NCN and the Voice of Guyana overwhelmingly prioritised President Irfaan Ali and other PPP/C figures, flooding prime-time programming with government and campaign events. Opposition visibility, the mission reported, was “negligible,” creating a near-static political landscape where only the incumbent narrative dominated the public sphere.
The report concluded that the imbalance “distorted the level playing field,” giving the ruling party a structural advantage no opposition party, including APNU, WIN, or the Forward Guyana Movement (FGM); could reasonably counter through normal campaigning.
The EU also highlighted a troubling trend: while private media houses showed varying degrees of political alignment, the most extreme inequities occurred inside the publicly funded system, where international democratic standards require fair access for all contestants. Instead, opposition parties often appeared on state platforms only in negative, dismissive, or conflict-driven contexts.
WIN and FGM were largely locked out of state media altogether, relying on private broadcasters and digital platforms to reach voters.
During yesterday’s engagement, APNU pressed the EU Delegation on the need for urgent corrective measures, including stronger broadcast regulations, guaranteed opposition access to state media during elections, and a firewall between government messaging and publicly funded newsrooms. Party officials argued that the report validates their longstanding warnings that state institutions were misused throughout the 2025 campaign, undermining both media pluralism and the electorate’s ability to make informed decisions.
APNU concluded the meeting by urging the EU to support reforms that would ensure future elections are conducted in an environment where public media serves the nation; not the party in power.
