When the US Government under President Bush decided in 1990 that it would support free and fair elections in Guyana, it was the Carter Centre that was called upon to act as the midwife for a new era of democracy in Guyana. Even though the Hoyte government’s lifeline of international financial and diplomatic support had […]

I must confess that I have had an ambivalent attitude to ethnicity for most of my life. My mother was a Hindu and so were all my relatives on both sides of my family. I grew up in the midst of celebrations of Hindu religious festivals, tempered by the dominant influence of the Lutheran Church […]

The responses of the PPP to The Cummingsburg Accord by APNU and the AFC were a declaration by President Ramotar that it is a ‘farce’ and the unleashing of Ms. Elizabeth Harper as its prime ministerial candidate. The first reaction was bravado. The second had real substance. Ms. Harper has credentials – ability, integrity, experience, […]

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 […]

Working alongside and observing Dr. Jagdeo (then Mr. Jagdeo) at close range in the PPP for twenty years, I know that he must be enormously tickled at the controversy generated by the court action challenging the presidential two-term limit. He loves the attention and gets a thrill from everybody being confused. That he knew about […]