October 5 has come and gone, but your Eyewitness is adamant that it didn’t bring back democracy to our country. It might’ve been the day that Jimmy Carter made that call to President Clinton at the White House – who had Hoyte call in the army to quell the riots at GECOM HQ to overturn the results. But it simply ushered in a long, brutal and bloody struggle to REALLY bring back democracy here!!
The New PPP Government was barely in place when Hoyte screamed the PPP was the “ethnic cleansing” of the public services!! When they were simply bringing in their own Permanent Secretaries that’s the practice in all Westminster Governments!! And of course, Hoyte pretended amnesia when it was under HIS watch that the IMF mandated a reduction in the Public Service – which the PPP halted!! Then there was Blackie London and his gang, who robbed Banks and Cambios, kidnapped Indian businessmen and demanded ransoms – but was yet draped with the flag of Guyana by Desmond Hoyte at his funeral!!
This was followed by the “Wild Men”, who founded the “Peoples Liberation Army” and helped spring the Mash 5 – including London’s lieutenant Douglas – from Camp Street Jail and set them up in Buxton!! Following up on his strident and hysterical moves to tag the PPP as “racial”, Hoyte upped the ante and segued into his “slow fyaah; mo fyaah” strategy that brought unprecedented violence into Guyanese politics. Some “political sophisticates” indOctoberrinated the Buxton “Freedom Fighters” to kill Policemen and Indians from surrounding villages with impunity – and even chased out Eusi Kwayana from the village where he’d lived and nurtured for over 50 years!! Yet Hoyte went into Buxton and announced the PPP was maligning Buxtonians by claiming there were criminals there!!
If we had real democracy after October 5, 1992, the authority of the lawfully elected PPP Government should’ve been recognised, and it should’ve never come to a point where drug lords had to “bring order” to the anarchy!! This was simply because the armed forces were unwilling to confront the “Freedom Bandits”!! Guyana became a killing field with bloody massacres by bandits at Lusignan and Bartica and counter-massacres by bandits at Agricola and the armed forces at Lindo Creek!! Peace was only returned after the Buxton bandits were wiped out after 2008.
And in the face of this frontal attack on the democratic state, the PPP upheld the tenets of democracy by holding elections in 2011, where their majority was reduced, and finally, they were voted out in 2015!! We can never forget that the PNC-as-APNU returned to its old habit of rigging elections to subvert democracy in 2020!!
Yes.., our democracy was birthed in blood – and we gotta protect it, always!!

…and majority rule
The Opposition is once again screaming that the Westminster principle of the winner of democratic elections assuming office – which is what our constitution demands – ain’t “democratic”!! They insist that the Opposition’s gotta be brought into the Executive, given Ministerial position – and perks!! – and this “shared governance” is the only kinda democracy for Guyana!! But your Eyewitness has gotta point out that even though they’d been singing this tune for decades – even Desmond Hoyte had joined the chorus just before he died! When they voted out the PPP in 2015, they didn’t bring in the PPP!!
And they even miniaturised the AFC that had brought them into power by agreeing to a coalition!! Previously, when the just departed PNC leader Corbin had made his pitch, the PPP of Bharat Jagdeo had said that there first had to be “trust” developed between the parties seeking shared governance!! The PNC of Granger’s treatment of Ramjattan and Nagamootoo from the AFC showed he had ample reason for being sceptical!!
What has changed since??

…discipline
What history has shown us is that democracy insists on a discipline of recognising that to ever “right” – which most like to demand – there is a reciprocal and PRIOR “obligation”!! In Guyana, we gotta follow before we can lead!!