It is commonplace to observe at Independence that “we inherited a state and not a nation”. That is, we were given all the insignias of statehood: flag, anthem, motto, constitution, hero, etc; but when it came to what a “nation” implied, a commonality of self-identification between the people and the country, we were sorely lacking.
Ironically, each of the insignias was dubbed “national” rather than “state” symbols, and we became a member of the “United Nations”.
That we accepted the label “land of six peoples” acknowledged our diverse heritages, origins, cultures and religions. For the longest while, we formed the paradigmatic “plural society” in which the people “mingled but did not mix”. While there were elections in Guyana from the beginning of colonisation, those were always on a restricted poll that captured only a select few, while the bulk of the population went on with their disparate lives. The introduction of the universal franchise, with its one-man one-vote principle, in 1950, however, altered the equation significantly when it came to identity.
The core necessity in this democratic scheme was to agglomerate for a party as many voters as possible, and this meant appealing to all markers with which voters identified. Race was one of the obvious markers, the first PPP was a careful alliance of leaders drawn from all the “six races”, and in 1953 they secured a remarkable victory that brought together people from across the spectrum. The serpent of discord entered the picture when Forbes Burnham was inveigled to break away from the PPP and form his PPP (Burnham), which contested separately in the 1957 elections.
From that point, the elections that followed in 1961 and 1964 solidified the political split on racial lines, since most people of Indian origin stayed with the PPP, while those of African origin gravitated to the PNC which Burnham had launched in 1958. The move to create a “nation” had been nipped in the bud. Guyana has not really moved past that division that occurred in 1964, since the PNC kept Guyana is a political time warp by creating a dictatorship under the cover of rigged elections until 1992.
With the return of free and fair elections in that year, after prodding by the international community and especially the United States, the people of Guyana had another opportunity to resume their journey towards nationhood. Sadly, this was stymied by the PNC, who refused to accept the results of the next elections in 1997, and launched massive violent protests in the streets of Georgetown, claiming that the elections were rigged in favour of the PPP. The scabs of the sores from the sixties were ripped off and the pus of ethnic hostilities flowed once again, as armed gunmen took on the state, more specifically the Police Force, putatively on behalf of “African Guyanese”.
Their attacks became terroristic when they widened their gunsights to include innocent civilians from the Indian-Guyanese community. Some brave leaders from the African-Guyanese community spoke out and publicly denounced the “political sophisticates” directing the violence, and declared “not in my name”; but the damage to the nation-building project was immense by the time the bandits were wiped out in 2008. By that time, drug gangs had broadened their scope of activities with rival gangs that included vigilantes, and hundreds were killed.
Politically, the PNC within the APNU/AFC coalition has created, fostered, and fanned a narrative that blames the PPP for the crime wave, vigilante and drug killings without acknowledging that it was the PPP government that had come under attack by the highly armed bandits, and that there was political nexus with them. This narrative has served to widen the racial chasms in the society.
However, with no ethnic group forming a majority in the country, the unchallenged SOPs produced by the PPP show they have bridged the racial divide to garner a majority. This means the Guyanese people are willing to continue the nation-building project, and this might be another reason the PNC does not want the real results to be revealed.
