Context is everything and with the defeat of Janet Jagan in 1999, the political context in Guyana changed into the debilitating, acrimonious and anti-developmental environment we now inhabit. I believe that unless we understand what I will call here the Janet Jagan Effect, we will be unable to properly grasp where we are today. We will continue, for example, with the false dichotomy between the regimes of Presidents Bharrat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar and not be able to make sensible proposals to extricate ourselves from the current morass.
A few initial points are important. When I speak here of context, I am not saying that there exists a concrete or generally acceptable notion of a