GUYANA Electing a "Comtrade-President"
Jenkins, Tony
Guyana is the forgotten dictatorship. Most people do not even know where it is, and it is amazing how often the country is confused with Guinea or Ghana in Africa. Located on the northeast...
...No arrest or investigation was made...
...I kept shouting, "I'm a journalist...
...Jagan is of Indo-Guyanese stock, whereas Burnham, who died last August, was Afro-Guyanese...
...The sixth, the United Force party, is widely regarded as a PNC stooge...
...One Western diplomat calculates that over 50% of all domestic economic activity is conducted on the black market...
...Jenkins got more than he bargained for, and describes here the Guyana he found on election day, as well as his own brush with mob violence...
...the Human Rights Association estimates that one in thirty Guyanese are members of the security apparatus...
...It is difficult for journalists to get into the country and if they write unpleasantries they tend to be deported, barred re-entry or find themselves fending off libel suits (see sidebar...
...The mob shouted back, "Who cares...
...He calls himself a "true Burnhamite" and says there will be no deviations from the course of the last 22 years which, he boasts, has brought "uninterupted peace...
...intimidation...
...Both act as mouthpieces for the People's National Congress (PNC), which has ruled for 22 years...
...There is no television and the country's only radio stations are both stateTony Jenkins, the Managua-based correspondent for The Guardian of London and the BBC, was one of a handful of foreign journalists granted a visa to cover Guyana's December elections...
...He says the cases are isolated and that the same happens in the United States...
...He described seeing multiple voting...
...He also discouraged assaults on PNC opponents...
...In addition, the security forces are swollen...
...A closer look suggests that socialist slogans and the trappings of democracy mask a different reality...
...So bad that the entire Amerindian Waiwai tribe has upped and crossed the border into neighboring Venezuela...
...Apathy appeared widespread on voting day, even in areas such as the capital where the government traditionally enjoys support...
...At one polling station, where about 700 were registered to vote, 133 had already been rejected by 1 p.m., according to the PPP poll watcher who checked the voters' name against the registry...
...sugar has fallen by 25% since 1971...
...Inflation is running at more than 30%, while the minimum wage for those fortunate enough to have work rose by only 10% in 1985...
...In a postelection press conference President Desmond Hoyte admitted that some children have died of malnutrition, "But what's the big deal...
...So concerned is he that he has-after years of resistance-agreed to join a broad opposition front that includes the WPA and the center-Right, pro-business Democratic Labor Movement...
...The price the government pays is only a fraction, perhaps a half, of REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 4what the rice is worth...
...The London-based Opinion Research Center found that 72% of those eligible to file absentee ballots did not exist...
...But in particular Burnham ensured that the Army, police and civil service were dominated by his AfroGuyanese supporters...
...They are encouraged by his mild drift toward the right in economic policy...
...The bank blames mismanagement and poor planning...
...One senior churchman described it as "just another warning to shut up...
...Really...
...The PNC later said the incident had been deliberately staged as part of an "international effort to rig assessment of the elections...
...Opposition newspapers have consistently been starved of newsprint and ink...
...I also saw party agents refused their right to supervise the vote...
...Poor management, a shortage of foreign exchange and a ban on all imported foodstuffs have led to growing malnutrition...
...In 1979 a photographer for the Standard, Father Bernard Darke, was stabbed to death by members of a government-backed religious cult, the House of Israel...
...You got no business here...
...By 1980 its support on the streets and at public meetings was so massive that the PNC was forced to take action...
...But when I took him at his word one teacher-who, like most Guyanese I spoke to, insisted on anonymity-said: "A new problem I have is that children are falling asleep in my class...
...Health care, in the absence of sufficient drugs and supplies, has fallen off to the point that in 1983 a group of doctors described the country's largest hospital as a "health hazard...
...I'm sure they aren't getting enough to eat...
...In a statement also backed by the Human Rights Association, the Bar Association and four trade union leaders, the bishops denounced the "familiar and sordid catalogue of widespread disenfranchisement, multiple voting, ejection of polling agents, threats, intimidation, violence and collusion by police and Army personnel [which] characterized the poll...
...People were voting with their feet...
...Burham had let it be known that he was a "moderate" and pro-Western...
...Washington's concerns are Guyana's voting record at the United Nations, its history of anti-American rhetoric and PNC economic policy...
...By comparison the fourth placed Working People's Alliance (WPA) was in an extraordinary situation...
...We need both...
...According to N.K...
...Embassy statements do not give great weight to the question of human rights...
...According to official results the PNC was re-elected with 79% of the popular vote...
...Although two de cades of flirtation with Burnham proved fruitless, the British and Americans believe they can work with Hoyte...
...Cheddi Jagan foresees "more corruption, more racism, more cronyism, further decline...
...The average turnout at five Georgetown polling stations visited between noon and 1 p.m...
...For those last pre-independence elections in 1964, the British also gerrymandered voting districts and introduced a divisive system of proportional representation...
...In 1980 Prime Minister Burnham had himself appointed president with sweeping powers...
...The "victory" gave Burnham an absolute majority in parliament...
...Its nearest rival, the People's Progressive Party (PPP), was credited with just 16...
...The minimum wage is officially $4 per day...
...If not in name, it was in effect the imposition of a one party state...
...and pushed Jagan from the building...
...The massive state intervention in the economy means that nearly 70% of all jobs are controlled by the PNC...
...But he goes on to stress that the "heavy currency of vote-rigging from the past is still in place...
...The colonial administration did little to prevent racial violence, and when the PPP once again emerged as the largest party, London ignored constitutional practice by inviting Burnham to form a coalition government...
...Located on the northeast shoulder of South America, it has only been independent from Britain since 1966...
...The British High Commissioner, John Massingham, describes Hoyte as "a decent chap," which helps explain why opposition politicians variously describe Massingham as "patronizing," "arrogant" and "uninformed...
...Bauxite production dropped 40% in a decade...
...the longest lines were outside the Brazilian Embassy as they queued for visas, either to escape entirely or just to buy goods for resale on the black market...
...The British solution was to split the PPP by encouraging Jagan's deputy, Forbes Burnham, to set up the People's National Congress (PNC...
...It was a power of patronage the founder-leader used extensively...
...Voting on Racial Lines The pattern is "familiar" because it started-with CIA prompting-under British colonial rule in the 1960s...
...Before independence the avowedly Moscow-line Communist leader of the PPP, Dr...
...None of this provides the opposition with much cause for optimism...
...At that moment two men in plainclothes, waving revolvers...
...It would make Guyana the first English-speaking military dictatorship in the Caribbean...
...As a result, black marketeers have stepped in to keep the economy alive...
...The staple food is rice, but there was none to be seen in the market...
...He has started to freeze out Cuban advisers and has spoken often of encouraging "individual enterprise," which the missions hope is a euphemism for private, and possibly foreign, business...
...Rice farmers must sell their entire harvest to the government, which supposedly arranges for distribution and marketing...
...one Central America-based journalist recently asked me...
...You should not have come to Guyana...
...Instead it has been bartering vast quantities for Soviet Ilyushin airliners and MIG helicopters, creating shortages...
...He said he was "security" but refused to produce any identification...
...Burnham never looked back...
...The economy is bankrupt and since the mid-1970s living conditions have deteriorated rapidly...
...Go and visit any school and see the children's happy, smiling faces," he chided journalists...
...The IndoGuyanese represent approximately 51% of the population, a fact which casts further doubt on the PPP's 16% showing in December...
...I waited outside...
...The Guyanese government is happy to foster this ignorance...
...It also estimates that per capita income has fallen a third since 1975...
...one party would be paramount over the nation's entire political, economic and social life...
...They ripped off my shirt, snatched my tape recorder and notes, as well as my money, and repeatedly punched and kicked me...
...Since 1964 voting has broken down largely along racial lines...
...Many were told, "You've already voted...
...Cheddi Jagan, had been elected prime minister on three occasions...
...appeared...
...Prime Minister Hamilton Green laughed off the whole affair, saying...
...We wanted to believe what we were being told, that Hoyte is a good man," says Eusi Kwayana, current leader of the WPA...
...And in 1974 Burnham proclaimed the "doctrine of paramountcy," whereby government became "merely one of [the PNC's] executive arms...
...The Western view is partially explained by the fear that the only alternative to the PNC is the Marxist PPP and that any process of change would be destabilizing...
...The results are non-credible because things are bad in Guyana...
...Hoyte: "A Decent Chap" Nevertheless, the British High Commission and U.S...
...Thousands Disenfranchised The election results are widely viewed with skepticism...
...Guyana, according to Burnham, became a "socialist, cooperative republic...
...and Canadian interests in bauxite mining...
...If such mass action-strikes, tax resistance, street demonstrations and disruption of the economy-emerges, some Western diplomats and Church figures believe it could force the Army-the Guyana Defense Forceto step in...
...they had been turned away...
...In 1973, needing a twothirds majority for constitutional changes, he sent the Army to seize ballot boxes, after initial returns showed the PNC losing...
...Breadbasket No More A quick walk around Georgetown's Bourda market just before Christmas revealed eggs selling at $3 a dozen, a chicken at $12 and a bottle of imported soy cooking oil at over $8...
...At a joint rally in Georgetown after the elections, leaders of five of the six opposition parties pledged themselves to unite and called for "mass action" and "civil disobedience...
...In 1976 he nationalized the sugar industry...
...he asked...
...Consequently, the farmers have taken to smuggling their harvest across the border...
...Public transport is chaotic...
...Cheddi Jagan of the opposition People's Progressive Party (PPP) to a small village outside Georgetown called Haslington, where the party's agent had been prevented from supervising the poll...
...Some people simply assume that Guyana must be like other Caribbean members of the Commonwealth: "I guess it has its problems, like Jamaica, but it's a democracy isn't it...
...For Guyanese journalists conditions are worse...
...The homes of Catholic Bishop Benedict Singh and several PPP leaders as well as the Catholic Presbytery and the offices of the WPA were all searched "for weapons...
...Guyana used to have the highest literacy rate in the Caribbean, now its pupils invariably rank last regionally...
...They have no stamina...
...Embassy both see Hoyte as a more moral man than Burnham...
...Now only the state-owned and pro-government Guyana Chronicle continues to publish daily...
...We were forced into our cars and taken at gunpoint to the nearest police station...
...President Desmond Hoyte owned...
...Results are Non-Credible" On December 9, the PNC fulfilled constitutional obligations by calling general elections for the fourth time since independence...
...In the early 1970s he nationalized U.S...
...In his honor children were obliged to miss two to three months schooling to practice massive gymnastics displays to be performed on his birthday...
...was less than 20...
...The results are nothing short of miraculous...
...Kwayana admits that "these have been the most peaceful elections...
...As he held his gun to my ribs, the "security" agent told me: "You a journalist...
...When the taxidermists are through he will be on show in a mausoleum in Georgetown's Botanical Gardens...
...In June of that year WPA leader Walter Rodney was assassinated...
...The planes that fly in daily from places such as Trinidad and Barbados are stuffed with "smuggled" packages of tea, dried milk, cheese and flour, destined for sale at inflated black market prices...
...Gopaul, treasurer of the Guyanese Trade Union Congress, real wages have plunged 60% since 1976...
...It would immediately turn into a racial war," says Cheddi Jagan...
...From the doorway, the presiding officer saw me with my tape recorder...
...We were detained for one and a half hours before being released with the warning that we might be prosecuted for "breach of the peace...
...less than 5% of the security forces are IndoGuyanese...
...Propaganda paints the government as popular and progressive...
...The split led to racial violence...
...In areas of PPP support there was more enthusiasm, but to little avail...
...According to the count, in six out of the ten voting districts the WPA was not even able to secure the votes of the 120 supporters who nominated its candidates...
...We don't want no recording," she yell ed, and the mob turned on me...
...Food shortages are just one symptom of the decline...
...Yet according to the PNC, its proportion of the vote in December rose by 1%, earning it another seat in parliament...
...The electricity supply is often available for just two hours a day...
...An estimated 30% to 50% of the working population is unemployed...
...The personality cult was confirmed after his death when the party decided to put the embalmed body of the "founder-leader" on public display for 100 years...
...and "Kill the spy...
...The population is actually declining through emigration and Guyanese will tell journalists that Venezuela "should invade us...
...The World Bank believes that unlike most Third World countries, the decline in Guyana cannot be blamed primarily on falling demand and low commodity prices...
...it's got money and democracy...
...It too faces a constant backlog of libel cases and fines handed down by pliant judges...
...Georgetown's water supply is said to be unsafe...
...Burnham was widely suspected of ordering the murder and even the State Department admits that the government was "im- plicated...
...Burnham suffered from delusions of grandeur...
...As Mike McCormack, secretary of the Guyana Human Rights Association, puts it: "The results are totally non-credible, unless there is some sort of Patty Hearstlove-your-oppressor factor at work...
...Guyana was once the breadbasket of the Caribbean...
...This has ensured that the PPP does not opt for armed uprising...
...Burnham used classic tactics to JANUARY/MARCH 1986 5hold on to power...
...A priest gave me a detailed written account of events in his parish throughout the day...
...In a district outside Georgetown called Enmore, hundreds of PPP supporters were milling around chanting "We want to vote...
...Indeed the new "Comrade-President" did put a stop to most absentee and proxy voting, practices heavily abused by the party machine in the past...
...Hoyte has refused to acknowledge any irregularities, describing the election as "totally above board...
...See "Guyana-Background to a Murder" and "Walter Rodney-In His Own Words," Report on the Americas, July/August 1980...
...PNC supporters scrubbing stain from their fingers so they could vote again...
...Mismanagement at Fault Burnham's controls paired with his cronies' corruption and inefficiency spelled declining production in key industries...
...His favorite color was imperial purple...
...One pointed his gun at Jagan, the other cocked his and slammed it into my kidneys...
...And he accuses Hoyte of being a "dictator," presiding over a "police state...
...Within minutes a group of about 20 thugs rushed in, chanting "Out...
...Jagan's PPP subsequently claimed that the men were members of a PNC death squad, while the police commissioner said they were plainclothes officers...
...thousands were disenfranchised...
...They have the guns and we would be massacred...
...Jagan went inside to talk to the presiding officer...
...Jenkins, you don't look beaten to me and I thought Caucasians bruised easily.'" Although President Hoyte occupied nearly every post, at one time or another, in successive Burnham cabinets, the WPA, together with the other opposition parties, had hoped that as the new man in charge Hoyte might be different...
...Similar detailed accusations flooded in from throughout the country, causing the Roman Catholic and Anglican bishops to condemn the elections...
...In 1968 he held elections with an electoral register which was internationally condemned...
...I saw a PPP member of the National Election Commission, Clement Rohee, barred entry to a polling station, despite his government letter of authorization with its flamboyant red seal...
...Now we are believing it less and less...
...The most damning criticism comes from the Catholic Standard, published weekly by the Catholic Church...
...and PNC agents removing the ballot boxes at the end of the day...
...This led successive administrations at the White House to fear a Soviet outpost in South America...
...Delusions of Grandeur Despite the assurances he had given London and Washington, Burnham established close links with the Soviets and the Cubans...
...Journalists Got No Business Here" On polling day I accompanied Dr...
...A police raid on December 17 appears to confirm Hoyte's intention to use tested PNC tactics...
...The WPA was formed in 1974 as a breakaway from both the PPP and the PNC.* It is youthful and multiracial...
Vol. 20 • January 1986 • No. 1
