THIRTY-FOUR years ago, Guyanese did something that a generation of younger citizens may struggle to imagine. They cast ballots that were actually counted.
After a quarter-century in which elections were widely condemned as rigged, the people of this country walked to the polls on October 5, 1992, and, for the first time since 1964, chose their own government.
As President Irfaan Ali reminded the nation in his statement, that day was not a gift from outsiders or a lucky accident of history. It was the hard-won result of decades of struggle by political activists, trade unionists, church leaders, civic organisations, journalists, and ordinary citizens who refused to accept that their votes should mean nothing.
The scale of what was reclaimed becomes clear only when we recall what had been lost. The President rightly points to the economic wreckage of the era; an external debt approaching US$1.9 billion, a debt-to-GDP ratio of roughly 925 per cent by the PNC government’s own admission, and schools, hospitals, water systems and roads left to rot.
The Caribbean Conference of Churches, visiting in 1990, described a country in a “state of crisis” with teachers and professionals fleeing in droves. This was no coincidence. When a government cannot be removed by the people it governs, it has little reason to serve them, and the decay of the economy and the decay of democracy were one and the same story.
That is why the reforms secured before 1992 matter so much, and why we should never let them be called technicalities.
Counting ballots at the place of poll, a fresh voters’ list built on house-to-house enumeration, a more representative Elections Commission, and the presence of international and local observers were the safeguards that made an honest result possible. Even then, the election nearly failed.
A mob besieged the Elections Commission headquarters, international consultants were evacuated, and violence was incited when it became clear which way the vote was going. The ballot survived because ordinary Guyanese, observers and officials held the line, and because President Desmond Hoyte accepted the verdict and permitted a peaceful transfer of power. That gracious act deserves its place in our history.
The lesson of October 5 is that democracy is never finally won. Guyana learned this again as recently as 2020, when a general election was followed by a protracted, anxious impasse over the tabulation of results in Region Four. It took months of court proceedings, a CARICOM-supervised recount, and sustained pressure from citizens, observers and the wider international community before the will of the electorate was respected and the new government was sworn in that August.
Anyone tempted to treat 1992 as ancient history should remember how recently the old habits of manipulation tried to reassert themselves. The vigilance our predecessors showed in the 1980s was needed again in our own time, and it will be needed again.
Nor can the dividend of that freedom be measured only in ballots. The restoration of democracy brought back international credibility, debt relief and investment, and it set the stage for decades of reconstruction in infrastructure, education, health, housing and telecommunications.
Today, Guyana, with oil production flowing since December 2019, is among the fastest-growing economies in the world. That growth is a product of political legitimacy as much as of geology. Investors, lenders and neighbours engage seriously with a country whose government answers to its people. Development and democracy are not rivals; as the President says, democracy is not an ornament to development but one of its foundations.
But prosperity brings its own test, and here the President’s call for One Guyana is the right one. This country’s politics has long been shadowed by ethnic division, and no amount of oil revenue will heal it unless the benefits of growth reach every region, every community, and every household, whatever their race, religion or political loyalty.
A Guyana where a child’s prospects are shaped by talent and effort rather than by ethnicity or political affiliation is the only honest tribute to those who fought for the vote. We can compete fiercely at the ballot box and still share a national destiny. Disagreement is the lifeblood of democracy; enmity is its poison.
So today we should honour October 5 by defending the independence of our electoral institutions, by insisting that every vote is counted where it is cast, by respecting results whether we win or lose, and by turning national wealth into better schools, better healthcare, and real opportunity for all.
The generation that won this freedom did not struggle so that their children could squander it. The greatest tribute we can pay them is to make sure that democracy, unity and opportunity endure, so that Guyana remains one people, one nation, and one destiny.
