As expected, the events at Babu John attracted wide attention and media coverage. A front page photograph in SN of President Ramotar belting out Bob Marley’s ‘Let’s Get Together’ was in striking contrast to the accusation by Dr. Bharat Jagdeo that during the 2011 elections, the Opposition APNU had sent drummers around calling on their […]
Category Archives: History
ALLIANCES AND COMPROMISES IN GUYANA’S POLITICS
The Cummingsburg Accord is only the latest in the history of alliances in Guyana’s post-war politics. The PPP emerged out of informal class and ethnic alliances in 1950. The PNC-UDP sought to merge African working and middle classes in the 1950s, with some resistance. The ‘moderate’ PNC came together with the ‘right wing’ UF in […]
CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM NEEDS POLITICAL CONSENSUS
A constitution defines the basic laws, structures for governance and rights and responsibilities under which a society is organized. A constitution needs to be changed when some or all of its rules no longer reflect the popular will or when they have been overtaken after the effluxion of time. Suggestions for reform of the constitution, […]
OPPOSITION UNITY
For some who oppose the PPP, an alliance of opposition political parties to contest elections has always been a prime objective. The AFC brought that reality closer at its conference last weekend when Party Leader, Khemraj Ramjattan, in a departure from previous policy, offered the AFC as the leader of a pro-democracy opposition alliance of […]
GUYANA’S POLITICAL DISTRESS
The notion in 1950 by the leaders of the PPP that freedom will bring justice has not materialized. We have won Independence and have shaken off authoritarian rule, but justice has not arrived. The rotation of political power between parties, supported mainly by our two major ethnic groups, has not fulfilled the dream of economic […]