Unfortunately for Guyana, our politics is not your ordinary garden variety type, wherein politicians pitch their plans for the development of the country to an open-minded electorate, which makes their voting decision based on an assessment of these plans and the parties’ capabilities for executing the same, based on their histories. In Guyana, the genie of ethnically-directed political violence was let out of the bottle as far back as on February 16, 1962 by the PNC and other forces, and it has never since been put back.
On that fateful day, subsequently dubbed “Black Friday”, following months of protests in Georgetown by thousands of supporters of the Opposition PNC and UF, ostensibly against the PPP’s budget; after failing to attack that party’s HQ, they started to loot and burn business places owned by Indian Guyanese. They focused on Robb, Regent, Water, High and Camp streets, and Stabroek Market. Before they were finished, fifty-six buildings had been destroyed by fire, twenty-one damaged; sixty-six both damaged and looted; twenty-nine market stalls damaged, and five cars burned. Hundreds of Indian Guyanese were beaten, one Police officer and four looters were killed.
Black Friday 1962 pretty much created the template for all subsequent political riots – confined to Georgetown and executed by the PNC’s support and direction of urban lumpen elements. The Wynn Parry Commission noted in its sanitised report: “The rioters were not drawn from any one particular race or political party, nor where the victims from one particular class. The looters belonged to the category of irresponsible individuals consisting for the most of hooligans and criminals, who in moments of excitement and mass hysteria throw away the inhibitions of a civilised society and seize the opportunity of preying upon their fellow citizens.”
Because the PNC were to rig all elections between 1964 and 1985, the directed political riot did not rear its head until 1992, with the return of free and fair elections. That does not mean there was no political violence, but those acts were meted out to opponents of the PNC by the state’s coercive apparatus — organised pro-government goons such as the House of Israel — disrupting political meetings. In 1992, the incipient violent protests were not allowed to spread beyond an attack on elections HQ, after it became apparent that the PNC was losing the elections. However, President Carter, whose Center was observing the elections, was caught in the mayhem, and made a call to the White House. PNC leader Desmond Hoyte was persuaded to call out the army.
After losing the following 1997 elections, the same Desmond Hoyte reverted to the 1962 template, and launched violent protests in Georgetown that resulted in the same arson and lootings, accompanied by beatings of Indian Guyanese perceived to be supporters of the PPP. The PPP’s term of office was truncated by two years, and a raft of constitutional changes were enacted to give the Opposition PNC a greater input into the political system.
But rather than dampening the violence, Hoyte launched a “slow fyah; mo fyah” strategy that escalated the protests beyond Georgetown and exacerbated both their intensity and volume. This political violence was then ratcheted up to a level never encountered in Guyana: a band of hard-core prison escapees in 2002 ensconced themselves in Buxton, from where they launched attacks on Policemen and neighbouring Indian-dominated villages. They called themselves “Freedom Fighters” for African Guyanese, which meant they were pursuing a political agenda by attacking innocent citizens judged to be supporters of the PPP Government. This gang was not eliminated until 2008, by which time hundreds of persons had been killed by the security forces and armed vigilante gangs dubbed “Phantom Squads”.
It is against this background that we condemn the coded language of PNC Leader Aubrey Norton last week at Burnham Court: “When we finish beating (the PPP), we gon got to take them on. Look, every day they produce a security company; every day a security company. But they must remember, that merely having guns does not guarantee you victory. He who can handle the gun is in a better position.”
