GEORGETOWN — APNU MP Sherod Duncan has intensified political tensions with a scathing takedown of President Irfaan Ali’s latest national address, accusing the Head of State of ducking the European Union’s hard-hitting findings on the 2025 elections and instead launching what he called an unprecedented verbal assault on the judiciary.
Duncan said the President “talked for nearly an hour, yet never touched the heart of the matter,” noting that the EU Election Observation Mission concluded the 2025 polls were carried out on a field heavily tilted in the government’s favour. The observers pointed to the massive advantage of incumbency, state resource use, and a media landscape where state-owned broadcasters gave the PPP/C overwhelming dominance.
Duncan argued that rather than confront those conclusions, Ali dismissed the report in sweeping fashion, calling it “biased,” “subjective,” and “ridiculous”, while shifting blame back to 2020. “This is not accountability. This is evasion dressed up as leadership,” Duncan charged. But it was the President’s attack on Justice Gino Persaud that Duncan said crossed the most alarming line.
After the judge delivered a ruling the President disliked, Ali branded it “perverse,” “flawed,” and “dangerous.” Duncan said such language violates basic democratic norms, stressing that judicial independence is supposed to be shielded from political temper tantrums, not dragged into them. “Across the Commonwealth, leaders know that you do not threaten or intimidate the courts,” he said.
Duncan also pointed out what he called glaring omissions in the President’s address. Not a word, he said, on why the government rolled out a biometric national ID system before Parliament even debated the enabling legislation. No explanation for why sweeping new migration rules were announced without a migration bill before the National Assembly.
No clarity on why the long-delayed 2022 Census results remain hidden, even as the National Economic Survey is already underway. And no acknowledgment that domestic murders continue to climb, despite official claims that crime is falling.
“When a government sidesteps the toughest questions, the public pays the price,” Duncan warned, urging citizens to remain vigilant and speak out. “The government must never become bigger than the democracy it serves.”
