AXE THE DAX

In 1962 the slogan ‘axe the tax’ became well known in then British Guiana. The United Force adopted it in its campaign against a tax on beer in the Kaldor Budget and against the PPP Government. The campaign was the beginning of a successful three-year, multi-national effort, marked by tremendous violence and property damage, to […]

PIT BULL POLITICS

The OAS Observer Mission, the British High Commissioner, the United States Representative and the Private Sector Commission have all publicly raised concerns about the dangers of inflammatory language being used in the election campaign in Guyana. The US representative went further and pointed out that the consequences that such language could endanger post-election peace and […]

PRESIDENT CARTER, A TRUE FRIEND OF GUYANA, VISITS AGAIN.

When the US Government under President Bush decided in 1990 that it would support free and fair elections in Guyana, it was the Carter Centre that was called upon to act as the midwife for a new era of democracy in Guyana. Even though the Hoyte government’s lifeline of international financial and diplomatic support had […]

ON ETHNICITY

I must confess that I have had an ambivalent attitude to ethnicity for most of my life. My mother was a Hindu and so were all my relatives on both sides of my family. I grew up in the midst of celebrations of Hindu religious festivals, tempered by the dominant influence of the Lutheran Church […]

ACCEPTING THE ELECTION RESULTS

Since the restoration of free and fair elections in Guyana, the only election results that have been accepted were those of 1992, even though they, and most other elections since then, were accompanied by violence, particularly after the elections. The Opposition castigated the 2011 elections alleging ‘discrepancies,’ although admitting that the results would not have […]