DESPITE threats to Guyana’s democracy, the country has prevailed through adversities. This has been credited to the modern democratic architecture of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) government.

Speaking on a special programme aired on Thursday to commemorate the return of democracy in 1992, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Gail Teixeira reminded that it was the PPP/C government that had restored Guyana’s democratic landscape.

In fact, the government, she said, continues to fight for democracy and for the rule of law to be respected.
The whole architecture of a modern Guyana has been constructed and developed when the PPP/C started in government, Minister Teixeira said.
However, the forces that have attempted to thwart the rule of law still remain prevalent.
Referencing the 2020 elections as the most recent attempt, Teixeira said: “It showed how delicate the balance is; how easy it is to jump over the precipice.”
She further explained, “In 2020, those same forces were willing to violate the will of the Guyanese people, to violate the constitution and to thwart all the democratic forces to stay in power, against the election results.”

Snap elections were held back in 2020 after the government of President David A. Granger lost a vote of no confidence by a margin of 33–32 on 21 December, 2018.
The elections were expected to be one of the most significant since Guyanese independence in 1966 because of one of the largest new discoveries of oil in the world off the coast of the country.

Although Election Day and the initial count were deemed to be free, fair and credible, the process of tabulating the votes was widely seen to have been fraudulent.
Leaders had later agreed to a recount of ballots, which was completed in June of that year. The recount showed that the PPP/C party won the most votes, with a bare majority of one seat.
However, representatives of the then A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) government had sought to thwart the results of the recount through a number of court cases.
Despite this, the Court of Appeal ruled that the results of the recount be utilised as the official results of the election. PPP/C leader Dr Irfaan Ali was sworn in as the 10th President of Guyana, six months later.

‘OSTRACIZED’
Joining the conversation, Attorney General Anil Nandlall noted that if democracy had not prevailed, the country would have suffered gravely.
“We would have again been ostracized. We would have no peace in this country, no investors would have come, we would have had an illegal government in power and the civilized world would have cut all ties with us.”

Guyana, he explained, would have suffered the fate it did back in 1992, when the country was riddled with debt and was not investor-friendly.
The absence of democracy would have resulted in the absence of freedom the imposition of authoritarianism, social degradation, economic stagnation and bankruptcy, he said.
He reminded that the country had once been in this situation due to democracy not being upheld.

“By 1992 we were completely bankrupt …Guyana by that time had become a basket case we were the second poorest country in the world in this hemisphere, the medical system had collapsed, the infrastructural system had collapsed, the educational system had collapsed.
Further reflecting on the struggles Guyana faced back then, Clement Rohee who was at the time the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Minister, explained that Guyana was riddled with foreign debt and these were categorized.

“One was multilateral debt and one was bilateral,” Rohee explained.
“The government worked very hard to address and seek debt relief in respective to bilateral debt, the multilateral debts, however, an extremely important type because this is where the multilateral lending agency would have lent money to the government.”