Funny the things you remember, because try as you must, sometimes you just cannot forget. On any other sunlit day, the handsome, light-skinned man suddenly looming over me might have passed me straight in the street without a second glance.
I am busy, scribbling in my bright blue ringed notebook, concentrating on writing legibly and fast, vaguely aware of the growing din and the rippling wave of people pushing back and forth against my bare elbows. I am more concerned about losing my Bic pen and precious tape recorder in the endless confusion of shuffling figures and feet. Worried about having to find them snarled under the selection of shifting slippers, sandals and shoes. I am on assignment. Then it happens without warning.
When I look up from his scruffy, plain pair, it takes me a few seconds to realise that he is speaking. To me. I frown trying to shift my attention to his words and sentences. He is so close I can smell fresh soap and cologne, see the sweat dripping down the sides of his clean-shaven face, the tightly curling brown hairs on his broad chest. He surprises me, with his hard, pale cat eyes and his audible anger, this anonymous man who seems about my age, maybe slightly older with his trim muscles and hint of menace.
Soon he is growling, cursing. “What the f… you writing, you is a damn spy?” he demands, his voice rising in rage. Before I can reply, he snatches the notebook, to my dismay the plastic pen goes flying and I cannot see where it falls, I protest. “Hey! I am reporter,” I gesture repeatedly, “Look at my press pass issued by the Guyana Elections Commission, read it.” Instead, he snatches the electronic device, shakes out the tiny compact cassette, yanks away my plastic press pass pinned to my collar, and grabs my small handbag.
The hostile crowd turns to us, they begin to close in, shrieking a string of slurs. A blur of images, clouds, colours and commotion. I look around for our company photographer or a policeman, then any familiar face from the media but they are none and for a moment, I am strangely calm, defiant even. I think of death and my parents when I hear the impact of multiple missiles and the steady cascade of breaking glass and I realise that he is joined by a second glaring man, in a striped jersey. One young woman with multiple gold earrings and red lipstick, glowers, points her finger and screams in my face, “Kill she coolie sk…” using the peculiar Guyanese phrase that adds an “s” to the vulgar slang for that most intimate part of a woman’s body. The insults, laughter and jeering intensify.
His huge hands are on my thin arms squeezing and shaking. The blows barely start when someone to my left pushes through shouting, “What you all doing?” He curses, “Leave her alone!” and shields me. He is an alert photographer from the New Nation, the weekly party newspaper of the ruling People’s National Congress (PNC). I am ashamed to admit that I cannot remember his name. But the date is Monday, October 5, 1992. He stands his ground, argues with them, insists I am a colleague, a journalist from the Guyana Chronicle, retrieves all of my things, and guides me through the grumbling mob.
The day started well enough and I stood outside of the Commission, thrilled, wanting to capture the atmosphere, knowing that history was about to be made in this the country’s first free and fair elections, following tumultuous decades of shameless rigging that saw the introduction of a new Constitution in 1980 and sweeping powers of an Executive Presidency that are still haunting us. Most of my then 25 years-life had been dominated by one party and one dictator, Forbes Burnham, but with his death in August 1985, successor Desmond Hoyte would launch a wide range of key economic, political and social reforms and badly-needed policy reversals.
Hoyte allowed the establishment of the country’s first major private newspaper in November 1986, when prominent lawyer turned publisher, David de Caires led the setting up of the then weekly Stabroek News (SN). A turning point for mass media in the country, the SN is today a leading and respected private daily, but still under attack from both major political parties in these increasingly dangerous times.
Early that October morning, I had voted for the first and last time, hopeful about the positive fate of the nation. I thought my profession and media accreditation would have been protection enough from any mob. Instead, my obvious Indian ethnicity meant I was automatically judged to be a strong supporter of the then Opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP) led by Dr. Cheddi Jagan, and therefore fair game by both sides.
We would eventually learn what happened outside the besieged Commission headed by the collected Rudy Collins that day, when the deadly hardliners and enemies of democracy within the PNC refused to contemplate the prospect of having to give up power, and chose to call out their rabid “dogs of war,” as Retired Major General and former GECOM boss, Joe Singh eloquently puts it in a public letter today. With some prodding from former American President Jimmy Carter and the Carter Center, Hoyte would agree, choosing to concede rather than plunge the country into further ethnic turmoil. It would take another 23 years to dislodge the PPP and by then the rampant corruption, nepotism and mismanagement had alienated so many, that I, like countless supporters at home and overseas celebrated when the coalition APNU+AFC emerged winner in 2015.
Characters may change as history repeats itself, but we Guyanese never seem to learn from the past. The blatant rigging of the March 2, 2020 results and the consequent condemnation by various teams of independent observers be it from the Commonwealth, the Organisa-tion of American States (OAS) and the European Union (EU) have slammed this country into an escalating crisis that threatens to send us back into the dark ages, whether in the attacks on the media, observers or critics, that all of the eight billion barrels of oil cannot ever undo.
It has taken the leader of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley to tell us what far too many refuse to see, with the dramatic collapse of the mission that was due to oversee a recount of votes cast, after a court order blocked GECOM from proceeding although both President David Granger and Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo agreed to the process.
“It is clear that there are forces that do not want to see the votes recounted for whatever reason. Any Government which is sworn in without a credible and fully transparent vote count process would lack legitimacy,” Mottley warned bluntly Tuesday.
As I write this, I can hear the melodious call of the muezzin echoing across the flimsy tree tops outside of the iron barred windows and I stop to offer a short prayer even though I am not Muslim, because if the unprecedented Corona virus does not kill us first, sanctions, devious politics and plotting politicians certainly will.
ID felt Guyana was in trouble when a pair of prominent politicians insisted their hands were clean. She knows why, after some 53 years of the PNC and PPP, there is a widespread shortage of toilet paper and hand sanitisers.
