Guyana faces "creeping coup"

In 1964, Forbes Burnham of the PNC took power under British rule, and lead Guyana to independence two years later. Burnham then established a racial dictatorship, using violent allies like the “House of Israel” (the same group that taunted the schoolchildren from Covington, KY at the recent Washington, D.C. pro-life rally) to cement his power and violently suppress opponents.

For 28 years, the Burnham / PNC dictatorship held power - through rigged elections and violent intimidation - until 1992, when the administration of former US President George H.W. Bush demanded that Guyana hold free elections. Under the supervision of the Carter Center, the 1992 elections ousted the PNC, and the PPP took power with over 55 percent of the vote.  PPP governments then held power until 2015.

In 2005, a small cross-racial party, the Alliance for Change (“AFC”) was formed from dissident members of the two major parties, and capturing the swing vote in the 2015 elections, entered into a coalition with Granger and his PNC party (now re-named APNU). The Granger-AFC coalition won the 2015 election by a razor-thin 1 percent of the vote, and took a one seat majority in Guyana’s parliament, the National Assembly.

But the Granger government’s popularity soon collapsed, as government corruption increased, violent crime exploded, armed gangs openly murdered prominent citizens, and prisoners burned-down the central jail in the capital, Georgetown, with convicts escaping into the streets.

The Granger government also targeted its PPP predecessors for politically-motivated arrests, filing contrived charges against former cabinet officials.  One official, the widely-respected former Attorney General, Anil Nandlall, was arrested by Granger for the “crime” of subscribing to and keeping the Caribbean Law Reports - something specifically set forth in his employment contract with the prior government.   
Worse, Granger ethnically targeted the East Indian community by ordering the country’s sugar mills - which employed over 20,000 workers - nearly all East Indian - to be closed immediately.  Tens of thousands of East Indians were thrown out of work, and encouraged to emigrate, in what many called an act of attempted “ethnic cleansing.”

One government coalition member of the Assembly, Carrandas Persaud, an attorney from Berbice - a large sugar producing region in the east of the country - could not accept the actions of the government. On December 21st, Persaud crossed the aisle to support the opposition vote of non-confidence, toppling the Granger government, and triggering elections, which under the constitution, must be held by March 19th.

Granger now refuses to go: Local elections, held in November, 2018, saw a collapse in Granger’s support, with the PNC/APNU receiving only 35 percent of the vote, to the AFC’s 3 percent and the PPP’s 60 percent. The Granger-dominated Guyana Elections Commission (“GECOM”) claims now that it can no longer hold elections - even though it just held the nationwide local elections in November.

The Guyana Bar Association has demanded that Granger obey the constitution, and that “the consequences of the no-confidence motion be accepted, and urgent preparations for elections by the Elections Commission be started.” 

“Granger is using the crisis in Venezuela as cover, knowing that the international community can address only one dictatorship at a time,” concluded one prominent Guyanese businessman resident in New York.  “Granger is illegally seizing power, in a creeping coup. Let’s hope this doesn’t end the same way as in Venezuela.”

This article is published courtesy of The Leader newspapers