Presidential adviser Ruel Johnson has taken it upon himself to advise the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) on how it should reorganise its parliamentary team and rebuild its political support. According to a NewsGuyana24 report dated October 10, 2026, Johnson is recommending that Aubrey Norton recall several parliamentarians, retain a selected few and replace the others with individuals he considers more suitable.
This raises an obvious question. What exactly is the objective of a presidential adviser attempting to advise the political opposition on who should represent it in Parliament?
Johnson is entitled to express his opinions. That is not in dispute. However, he is an adviser associated with the PPP/C administration, the very government that the PNCR is supposed to hold accountable. Why, then, is he so interested in determining how the opposition should organise itself?
His intervention must be examined in the context of a political strategy known as reflexive control.
Reflexive control is a method of influencing an opponent’s decisions by deliberately shaping the information, perceptions and assumptions on which those decisions are based. The objective is to get the opponent to make decisions that appear to be entirely his own, while those decisions actually advance the interests of the person or organisation seeking to influence him.
The person being influenced may genuinely believe that he is acting independently, defending a principle or protecting his organisation. He may not recognise that the information and arguments influencing his decisions are serving an entirely different political objective.
This is what makes reflexive control particularly effective. It can cause an organisation to act against its own interests through the decisions of its own members.
The events leading up to the 2025 General and Regional Elections provide important lessons in how this strategy can operate.
Consider the case of Jermaine Figueira.
Figueira was not an outsider attempting to influence the PNCR. He was a serving parliamentarian, a senior party figure and someone whose opinions carried weight among sections of the membership.
When he publicly disagreed with Aubrey Norton over matters such as shaking President Irfaan Ali’s hand, Figueira presented his position as one of principle, political maturity and independent thinking.
To many loyal PNCR members, his position may have appeared reasonable. After all, what is inherently wrong with shaking the President’s hand? Why should engagement with the government be interpreted as disloyalty?
These were arguments capable of influencing how members viewed the party leadership. Figueira appeared to be defending principles that reasonable people could support, while his public disagreements also placed the leadership on the defensive.
But there was another dimension to these developments.
According to information internally confirmed by the PNCR, allegations had emerged that Figueira received mining blocks while he was still serving as a party parliamentarian. These allegations raise questions about the nature of his relationship with the PPP/C administration during the same period that he was publicly challenging his own party leadership.
The details of those transactions have not been independently established here. Nevertheless, the timing alleged by the PNCR is politically significant.
Figueira subsequently left the PNCR and openly endorsed President Ali, eventually appearing on a PPP/C campaign platform ahead of the 2025 elections.
The significance of Figueira’s conduct is that his public disagreements with the PNCR leadership carried the appearance of independent, principled positions, while the mining-block allegations raised serious questions about interests that were not apparent to the members he was influencing.
The point is not that Figueira was necessarily the person being subjected to reflexive control. The concern is that he may have been used as an instrument through which reflexive control was exercised on other members of the PNCR.
His position within the party gave credibility to his arguments. Loyal members could have been influenced by what appeared to be principled disagreements without knowing about the alleged concessions or appreciating the political interests that might have been involved.
This is how reflexive control can operate through trusted individuals. Arguments are advanced that appear reasonable and independent. Those arguments influence the thinking of others, including loyal members who have no intention of undermining their organisation. The resulting disagreements may then produce political consequences favourable to an opposing party.
Figueira was not the only prominent opposition figure whose political position changed ahead of the 2025 elections. There were others whose departures and political realignments had consequences for the PNCR.
Each may have had different motivations. Some may have acted knowingly in pursuit of political or personal interests, while others may have been influenced by arguments and circumstances they genuinely believed justified their decisions.
The political effect, however, was that internal disagreements within the PNCR became part of a wider political contest from which the PPP/C benefited.
It is against this background that we must examine Ruel Johnson’s intervention.
Johnson is not simply expressing concern about the PNCR’s political fortunes. He is recommending the removal of named parliamentarians, identifying those who should remain and proposing individuals who should replace them.
He has also introduced allegations about supposed pay-for-play arrangements involving parliamentary appointments, without providing supporting evidence in the material reported by NewsGuyana24.
Such allegations have the potential to generate distrust, resentment and further disagreements within the party.
One must therefore ask what would be achieved if the PNCR were to follow the recommendations of a presidential adviser. Would the resulting changes strengthen the opposition, or would they produce another round of internal conflict?
More importantly, why should someone associated with the government be so concerned about the internal composition of the opposition’s parliamentary team?
These questions do not require us to assume that every intervention is part of a coordinated political operation. They require us to examine the interests being served and the consequences of the actions being advocated.
A Warning to PNCR Members and Supporters
Given the success of the political manoeuvring that preceded the 2025 elections, we should expect similar attempts to damage the PNCR from within. Those who benefited from the divisions and defections have every reason to believe that the same approach could work again.
We should be particularly alert to individuals who righteously proclaim that they are acting in the best interests of the PNCR, while encouraging others to join them in actions that could undermine and damage the very party they claim to be protecting.
Some may knowingly be advancing the interests of the party’s political opponents. Others may genuinely believe that they are acting in the party’s interest, unaware that they are being influenced to achieve an entirely different objective.
Some may be agents of reflexive control, while others may become its victims.
This is not about suppressing legitimate criticism, discouraging internal democracy or demanding unquestioning loyalty to the leadership. It is about recognising that legitimate grievances can be exploited, and that those seeking to damage an organisation may find it more effective to have its own members do the damage.
The lesson from 2025 is that the greatest danger does not always come from those openly attacking the PNCR. It can also come from those who claim to be defending it.
So, when the next group emerges, loudly proclaiming its commitment to saving the PNCR while mobilising others to take actions that could damage the party, we should examine not only what they are saying, but what they are doing and whose interests their actions ultimately serve.
Reflexive control succeeds when people believe they are acting in their own interests, while unknowingly advancing the objectives of those working against them.
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