Mr Rohee’s letter overlooked many other Guyanese

Dear Editor,

I write to respectfully reject the position advanced by Mr. Clement Rohee in his recent letter, dated October 8, 2026, and captioned “Cheddi Jagan was the central figure in the October 5th story.”^[1] His account is neither complete nor balanced, and it cannot serve as an authoritative recollection of that critical period in our nation’s life.

Mr. Rohee’s letter presents the story of October 5, 1992, as though it were almost exclusively the story of Dr. Cheddi Jagan and the PPP. This is furthest from the truth. It conveniently overlooks the many other Guyanese and international figures whose contributions, had they been absent, would have ensured that the PNC still be in office today.

The evidence points to a combination of sustained regional pressure—which created the necessary influence in Washington, D.C.—and the changing geopolitical landscape following the arrival of President Ronald Reagan and his deputy George Bush, alongside the weakening of the Soviet Union and the emergence of “glasnost and perestroika”, the two reform policies introduced in the mid-1980s by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Were it not for the direct support of the USA, Mr. Rohee might still be holding a placard in front of the Office of the President today, and a PNC President would have been presiding over a full-fledged military dictatorship.

There are also the Caribbean leaders, namely Dame Eugenia Charles (May 1919 – September 2005), who served as Prime Minister of Dominica until 1995, and Sir James Mitchell (May 1931 – November 2021), who served as Prime Minister of St. Vincent until 2000. In 1983, Mrs. Charles was invited to Washington, D.C., to solidify the strong relationship between herself and Reagan around the Grenada issue. It was on that foundation that she and Mr. Mitchell were able to reopen doors in Washington at the highest levels to advocate for Guyana’s freedom in 1986.

Very few will recall the message they shared with President Desmond Hoyte at that 1986 meeting on the island of Mustique—a meeting that bore the permanent imprimatur of Eugenia Charles. In a speech delivered in September 2008 at the UWI Open Campus in honour of Mrs. Charles, Sir James spoke from his private diaries. He revealed that she had personally advocated to Reagan that “it would become a contradiction in value should the election irregularities in Guyana remain unchallenged now that we have brought democracy to Grenada together.”

It was on this foundation that the Heads of Government of Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Barbados, Grenada, Guyana, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines met in Mustique for the first time. Dame Eugenia led the charge in that candid but tense meeting, having the full backing of Reagan to resolve the Guyana issue within the CARICOM framework. According to Sir James, she opened with this statement: “We could not have our headquarters in the capital of a country with rigged elections, nor should we tolerate keeping Guyana in the Community and sully our democratic reputation with continued indifference to repeated flagrant irregularities in the electoral process.” Others expressed similar sentiments, though without the same firmness of position as Mrs. Charles.

Sir James revealed in that speech that “Hoyte explained himself with a plethora of statistics on the elections, including references to the positive showing his party made with the Indo-Guyanese section of the population, especially the business community.” After some two hours of discussion, the Caribbean leaders secured from Hoyte an undertaking that CARICOM would be entitled to monitor the electoral process in the future, culminating in observers being permitted to be present in Guyana to determine the fairness of elections. Jagan was nowhere on the scene at that meeting and could never have secured such a commitment from Hoyte.

But Mr. Rohee appears confused because in a letter he wrote upon the passing of Dr. Yesu Persaud in January 2022, he alluded to the 1991 Washington, D.C., Mission. That Mission was led by Dr. Yesu Persaud (1928–2022) and Bishop Randolph George (1924–2016), as leading Guyanese civil society figures at the time. They successfully met with high-level U.S. State Department officials^[2] to make the case for international observers and electoral oversight, and they successfully influenced an outcome that added critical value to the process of free and fair elections in 1992.

Then there was Desmond Hoyte, who, as President, played a decisive role in the events that led to the 1992 election. Whatever one thinks of his politics, it was Hoyte who allowed the electoral process to proceed and who accepted the result. That was true statesmanship that was supported by a critical decision at a critical moment. To write about 1992 without acknowledging Hoyte’s role to democracy is to write fiction, not history. There was major support within Congress Place for the PNC to use whatever means necessary to stay in power, much like President Paul Biya of Cameroon (who has been in power from 1982 to the present). They even had a plan to institute a strategy that entailed a combination of undemocratic electoral controls, a carefully balanced security apparatus that preserved absolute loyalty to the party, and strategic management of the economic elites.

Many would not know, but Major General (retd.) Joseph Singh can attest to what took place on that fateful day in 1992, when Hoyte called him and issued instructions. Those instructions were never to suppress the will of the people or destroy their voice; they were to provide the safe space for the will of the people to be respected—to the angst of one particular former leader of the PNC, Mr. Hamilton Green, who, against the wishes of Hoyte, brought the people out onto the streets in front of the GECOM Building on Croal Street, which culminated in major burning and looting of stores on Regent Street. I listened carefully to then Senior Superintendent Paul Slowe’s programme last week, where he spoke of his personal action to contain the violence—despite his having personally voted for the PNC in 1992. What he was clear about was the support he had from Hoyte at the time to bring peace to the land.

Beyond these few names, there were many others—politicians (including many PPP leaders, such as Pandit Reepu Daman Persaud), civil society leaders (including Clairmont Lye and Dr. Makepeace Richmond), religious figures (such as Sister Doreen Rowtie of the Catholic Church), diplomats (including President Jimmy Carter and David Carroll), and ordinary citizens—who worked with the United States Government in particular to ensure that Guyana had free and fair elections, and elections free from fear. Their efforts mattered. They helped create the conditions in which October 5, 1992, became possible.

Mr. Rohee’s letter also fails to engage honestly with the role of the United States Government in the 1992 election outcome. Without the active involvement of the USA —and the solid work done by former Ambassador Theresa Tull, Officer in Charge Denis Hays, and Ambassador George Fleming Jones—our Guyanese story would not have been the same.

Good history makes for good citizenry. But the history Mr. Rohee offers is not good history. It is a selective, self-serving narrative that elevates one man and one party while diminishing the contributions of others. It misleads people about the past and misinforms their debates about the present.

The truth matters.

References

1. Cheddi Jagan was the central figure in the October 5th story ↩
2. 20. The intensified struggle for electoral reforms in Guyana (1990-1992) — www.guyananews.org ↩