This crisis has been in the making for over 50 years – ever since the declaration of independence that came on the heels of the collapse of a multiracial anticolonial movement, the intervention of the joined imperialist forces of the UK and US and the convulsive coastal racial disturbances of the 1960s that delivered almost unshakeable constituencies of African and Indian Guyanese to the two major political parties in Guyana.

It has also put Guyana firmly in the sights of Western powers, a community intent on making an example of Venezuela and for whom Guyana is of immense geopolitical strategic importance, a community that has never acted in the interest of the region’s sovereignty (cases in point, Guyana’s 1953 elections; the combined efforts of Canada, the United States and France to remove democratically elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand-Aristide on the 200th anniversary of Haitian independence; the meeting that took place in Jamaica this past January between the US Secretary of State and several Caribbean leaders that clearly sidelined CARICOM).

In a recent statement in which she stood by the report of the CARICOM observer team which concluded that “the recount results are acceptable and should constitute the basis of the declaration of the results of the March 2, 2020 elections,” Barbados Prime Minister and CARICOM Chair Mia Mottley noted that following the declaration of the winner, “[t]here must be room for all regardless of who wins and who loses.”

To be sure, in the heat of election

campaigns and when seeking votes, these political leaders promise a new dispensation but once a winner is declared, shared governance is baptised ‘Coalition’ or ‘CIVIC’ and draped in party colours of green and yellow or red.

Rory Fraser noted, in a letter to the Stabroek News of June 29, 2020 in which he “fully expect[s] the inevitable result will be based on the GECOM verified recount and sanctioned by CARICOM…[that] in retrospect, I realized Guyanese were unfortunately left to choose between the very bad and the least worst of two parties ordained by a constitutional and electoral framework they (PPP and PNC) contrived.”

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Richard Parsons

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