Winston Shripal Murray, CCH, MP, Former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Trade, Tourism and Industry and Chairman of the People’s National Congress Reform, died on November 22, aged 69.
Winston Murray would have been the fittest person in Guyana to explain how it was that Guyana was able to procure Tupolev TU 154 aeroplanes and Mi-8 helicopters from Russia twenty-five years ago. IFA lorries from Germany and UTB Universal tractors from Romania similarly made their made their way into the public corporations.
In the straitened circumstances of the decade of economic depression of the 1980s, it was Winston Murray’s task, during his tenure as Head of the Department of International Economic Cooperation, to negotiate and execute economic cooperation agreements with socialist bloc countries. These included bartering bauxite with states that would accept it for the machinery and other goods this country needed to survive.
He also extended his economic reach elsewhere. He concluded agreements with Canada on double taxation, with Korea on investment promotion and protection and with Japan for electricity generating plants on the East Bank and West Bank Demerara.
Educated as an economist, Winston Murray honed his analytical and negotiating skills as a public servant in the Ministry of Trade from 1970 to 1972. Seconded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1971-1972, he was appointed Second Secretary in the Guyana Embassy in Brussels and a member of the Guyana delegation to the United Nations. There he was able to articulate Guyana’s position on the UN financial budget and on proposals for departmental reorganisation.
Back in Guyana, Murray’s career in the public service progressed rapidly. He was appointed Senior Economist and Deputy Secretary to the Treasury in the Ministry of Finance in 1974-1979; Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Trade and Industry in 1979-1983 and Head of the Department of International Economic Co-operation in the Office of the President in 1983-84. He reached the zenith of his career when he became Head of the Presidential Secretariat and Head of the Public Service in 1985.
President Forbes Burnham’s death in office in August 1985 and Desmond Hoyte’s accession brought Murray’s official public service career to an end when he accepted the offer to make the transition from public servant to politician. He was drafted onto the PNC’s list and was elected to the National Assembly the same year. Appointed Minister of Trade, Tourism and Industry and Deputy Prime Minister, Murray was part of Hoyte’s economic triumvirate along with Carl Greenidge and Haslyn Parris.
Murray was one of the executors of Hoyte’s Economic Recovery Programme that was introduced at a time when preferential markets for Guyana’s commodities were disappearing and greater reliance had to be placed on private capital to propel economic growth. The administration from mid-1988 unleashed a raft of sweeping changes. These included the elimination of price controls and import prohibitions; downsizing the public service and introducing a privatization programme for state corporations; reducing tariffs; restructuring taxes to eliminate exemptions; increasing electricity rates and opening a free market for the sale of foreign currency.
Winston Murray, as Minister, was a member of Caricom’s Council for Trade and Economic Development, he was the administration’s chief spokesman on regional commercial affairs. As such, he was involved in the negotiations for the Common External Tariff and the harmonisation of fiscal incentives and industrial planning in the region. He was responsible for overseeing the system for determining the foreign exchange requirements for importers, on the basis of which import licences were granted. He also became Guyana’s Alternate Governor to the CDB, IBRD, IDB and IMF.
Desmond Hoyte’s 1985-1992 presidency was the high point of Murray’s optimism that national unity could be forged that would allow for prosperity and inclusivity. He felt that Hoyte’s economic reforms set the country solidly on a path to recovery and offered a real prospect of providing for every Guyanese a decent standard of living.
The recovery programme was regarded as a turning point in Guyana’s economic history but, when general elections were held in 1992, the PNC was defeated. Winston Murray ended up without a job but, unlike several others who took the opportunity to quit, he remained close to the party. He became Chairman of Guyson’s Engineering Ltd and started law studies at the University of Guyana.
After the electoral defeat, he went on to distinguish himself in the National Assembly. As a front-bencher for the past 25 years, Murray was able to bring the wealth of his accumulated experience, his gift of elocution, his talent for analysis and his flair for research to the Assembly. He was easily among the finest and most fluent debaters of his times and his insightful and intelligent presentations were respected by both sides of the house.
As the 2001 general elections approached, attention was focused on Desmond Hoyte’s health and the prospect that the defeat in 1997 elections would be repeated. Dissidents in the party’s upper echelons started agitation for Hoyte’s removal as leader. Murray, with the support of some elements in the Reform component made a bid for the chairmanship of the party but Hoyte was re-elected leader at the Congress in August 2002 and it was Robert Corbin who won the chairmanship. The situation changed dramatically when, four months later, Hoyte died suddenly.
Corbin became interim leader at a special congress and his position was confirmed two months later. Murray was eventually elected chairman the next year in 2004. He seemed quite happy with Corbin’s leadership confessing “… having seen him lead the party since February 2003 I not only feel comfortable but I am satisfied that he has led the party extremely well and I am very happy with his style [of leadership] and the direction in which he was taking the party.”
Murray, an affable and good-natured man, had earned the respect of party members during his four decades of public service and political stewardship. There was never any doubt about his personal popularity or his political loyalty. His support might have been eroded in the minds of some who felt that, as Chairman he did not use the authority of his office and the full force of the party’s constitution to control dissidents who had taken to criticising the party in the press. Many of the noisiest dissidents later became Murray’s most ardent supporters.
Murray announced his resignation as Chairman suddenly in January 2009. He explained his decision by saying that the PNCR’s public abandonment of a position he took to support the PPP/C administration’s side on the Economic Partnership Agreement between the European Union and Cariforum made it “impossible” to continue to hold the office with credibility.
Murray, later that same year at the 16th Biennial Congress in August 2009, decided to challenge Corbin for the PNCR leadership. He was able to accumulate endorsements to strengthen his campaign. Stanley Ming, formerly of the party’s Reform wing, indicated his ‘unconditional’ support and former Minister of Health Dr Richard Van West-Charles also backed Murray’s bid. The challenger lost the leadership contest but continued in campaign mode. Last October, he chose the island of his birth – Leguan – to declare his desire to become his party’s presidential candidate to contest the 2011 election.
Murray’s world view was deeply influenced by his upbringing on the 30 km² island of Leguan. Little more than a village with an easy-going population of about 5,000 of mainly African and Indian farmers seemed to be a haven. It was blissfully isolated from the communal turmoil in other parts of the coastland. During the ‘Disturbances’ of 1964, however, his alma mater – St Peter’s Anglican School – was destroyed by what was considered to be an act of political arson. The community rallied and, despite persistent differences, prevented other crimes from being committed.
The great idea that inspired his life was national unity. He believed that the country would make progress in the political, social and economic spheres only if people of all ethnicities would work together. Murray, of mixed African and Indian descent, married a person of African ancestry. He left Guyana during the volatile 1960s because of what he perceived to be the widening division between the larger ethnic groups to which his family belonged. He thought then that both the People’s Progressive Party and the People’s National Congress bore some responsibility for the ‘Disturbances.’ During his years abroad, he did not vote in the general elections of 1964 and 1968 as he was convinced that neither party was capable of bridging the gap between the two ethnic groups.
He changed his opinion when he returned home in 1970 – the year Guyana became a Republic. He entered the public service under the PNC administration and joined the PNC after he became convinced about that party’s earnestness to build a nation for all Guyanese. He felt that the PNC possessed the will and capability to bring about peace and foster co-operation among the ethnic groups necessary for national development.
Murray was born on January 31, 1941 at Enterprise village on Leguan Island in the Essequibo. He attended the St Peter’s Anglican School and was baptized and worshipped at the St Peter’s Anglican Church on the island. Residents still remember him fondly as a primary school teacher and a cricketer who represented the island as an opening batsman.
He was educated at the London School of Economics from which he graduated with the BSc in Economics in 1970 and at the University of Guyana where he earned the LLB at the mature age of 55 in 1996. He also received a Certificate in Public Finance from the Institute of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC in 1975 and the Legal Education Certificate from the Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad in 2000. He entered private legal practice in October 2000.
Winston Shripal Murray was a distinguished public servant and politician. For his service to the state, he was awarded Guyana’s Cacique’s Crown of Honour (CCH) in 1984.
He married Marva, née Fortune, whom he met at the Government Training College for Teachers, in June 1963. The couple’s two sons survive him.
