It is my pleasant duty to welcome you all to the 9th Commemorative Hugh Desmond Hoyte Lecture. It is my sincere hope that this lecture will help you to improve your understanding of one of our finest leaders, what he sought to achieve for the people of Guyana and allow you a glimpse into one of the most important periods of our political and economic history. You will see that much of what was going on at the time, resembles the current period of our political existence. My high school teacher schooled me to believe that you can refer to any saying and blame it on Shakespeare and the Bible. I do not have to do this. I am about to share a saying with you and I know where it is from. It was Mark Twain who said that History does not repeat itself but its periods tend to rhyme with each other. I submit, even with the vast oil resources we have acquired, that our current travails and challenges rhyme with what we were passing through as a nation in that seminal period after the 1997 elections.
I am mühlet most of you would know that this lecture is usually delivered in honour of Mr. Hugh Desmond Hoyte on his birth anniversary. This 9th Commemorative Lecture is being held at a different time. An explanation is therefore necessary. The original intention of our Party was to ensure that the lecture was held as usual on his birth anniversary. However, because of a number of pressing issues we could not do so. Yet, we all understood that the sterling legacy that Mr. Hoyte bequeathed to his Party and this nation had to be explained and shared without any further delay. The Party, therefore, decided that even though it is sometime after his birthday, it will proceed with the lecture.
My task is to speak about Mr. Hugh Desmond Hoyte as a Statesman, who transformed the Guyana economy and promoted national development. I believe that I am in as good a position as anyone to do so. Of the lectures delivered on this occasion many of the presenters knew Mr. Hoyte, through having worked closely with him, such as Dr. Tyrone Ferguson, Supriya Singh-Bodden, Major General Joseph Singh, Stanley Ming and Carl Greenidge. I have also had the privilege of being his political colleague for a considerable period of time. The record shows that we have differed on different occasions, on tactical issues, especially during the political struggles which occurred in the aftermath of the 1997 General Elections. But we have had in common the strategic and overall objective of a unified and strong PNC which could continue to contribute to the development of our country. Also, we both loved our country and wanted to see it develop and prosper. I can also reveal on this occasion that while I was pursuing my Masters’ Degree in the United Kingdom, Mr. Hoyte visited with me and I received advice and assistance from him. Our differences did not dominate our relationship as politicians and human beings.
Guyana can be a country of sometimes simple and misplaced criticisms. Over the years, our Party, its members and its supporters have had to endure some of the most ill-informed criticism of Mr. Hugh Desmond Hoyte. Yet, more discerning minds have concluded that Mr. Hoyte’s presidency had a transformational effect on the politics, economics and culture of this nation. Many scholars, observers and citizens of this country have recognised that Mr. Hoyte had that element in him which allowed him to place the interests of the nation above partisan political considerations. No less a person than one of our distinguished citizens, Mr. Ian McDonald, in referring to Desmond Hoyte, made the following observation on the 11th October 1992 after the election results were announced:
“An ordinary politician places the nation at the service of himself. A statesman is a politician who places himself at the service of the nation. Mr. Hoyte – who deserves more than most to be addressed by the honorific “Mr. President” even after leaving office – has placed himself at the service of the country on a number of crucial occasions…” Mr. Hoyte was undoubtedly a Statesman.
No one can accuse Mr. McDonald of partisanship. This is an honest assessment of Mr. Hoyte as a Statesman. The question must be, how did Mr. Hoyte arrive at this position? It was not simply a question of placing the nation above partisan politics. It was also a question of a man who over the years became skilled and experienced in the politics of Guyana and understood what decisions needed to be taken to make the country truly independent and free. He was a man who understood the international environment and developed his policies and programmes cognisant of the changing world at the time. Mr. Hoyte sought to put policies in place which would benefit not one section of the society but the society as a whole. He was prepared to withstand criticism for doing so. A lesson that is relevant now. He weathered the storm of criticism but many in hindsight now applaud him for his leadership on the ethnic issue in Guyana.
Desmond Hoyte also made considerable sacrifices in order to serve his country. We remember that he lost both of his daughters in a car accident on the Linden-Soesdyke Highway when they were on their way to Linden to join him for a May Day Rally.
Permit me to introduce a note about the humanity of this man who, according to the popular view, was a stern and unbending politician. Like most popular views of things political, this was a myth. Desmond Hoyte was as human as any of us. After his death, Leon Walcott, the well known journalist, revealed in an article that he had seen Desmond Hoyte on occasions give free reign to his emotions. Mrs. Hoyte confirmed this element in his character. And she was to relate when he joined her in Cuba after the death of his children, he wept bitterly over being deprived of beings he loved. I can also vouch for the human side of this man.
It is unfortunate and regrettable that most of those who knew of Desmond Hoyte did not have the privilege to see Mr. Hoyte in his more private moments. He had a fund of jokes with which he could delight his interlocutor. He was a very private man who had probably one of the best stocked Libraries where he spent long hours in quiet contemplation as he listened to some of the outstanding classical composers and the maestros of Jazz. It was while he was in contemplation in his favourite place of relaxation that he came up with important ideas for the economy and the politics of our country. The Guyana Prize was born of his reading of Greek History where he developed an appreciation for the notion that the body as well as the mind must be fed in order that the citizens of a society can find fulfillment and social peace. I can attest to the fact that he gave books and encouraged reading and analytical thinking.
We are often given the impression in Guyana that the rough and tumble nature of our politics leave no room for what is human and what is decent. This too is a myth. We all now know that Jagan and Burnham, despite their turbulent relationship, met often at different locations. Similarly, observations by one of Hoyte’s political opponents have debunked this notion. I am speaking here of Dr. Rupert Roopnarine.
Things are never what they seem. Dr. Rupert Roopnarine saw the human side of Desmond Hoyte. This insightful observation is taken from Major General Joe Singh’s Commemorate Lecture in which he stated:
“For a man with an earned reputation for stubbornness and severity, he had a way of changing his mind when it most mattered in Guyana. In my exchanges with him all were cultured and patriotic. These are the ones I shall remember most keenly, when gravitas fell away and revealed a man, moved by the grief of his wife over the loss of her dog.”
Not only was Desmond Hoyte a cultured mind but he was also a fine writer. Good literature moved him. Delight and relaxation came to him from good books. I marveled when he was writing a speech. He edited them meticulously.
Our diplomats knew that whenever Desmond Hoyte turned up in their capitals, his first Port of Call was the bookshop. It was a Port of Call which could be time consuming. Many of our diplomats knew that to seek to impose a time limit on him whether as President of Guyana or the Leader of the Opposition was nothing short of Lese Majesty. As a result, Mr. Hoyte was often left to browse to his heart’s content.
These qualities of a widely read and cultured human being Desmond Hoyte brought to his Ministerial responsibilities a sense of purpose and a determination to place the politics of his country on a higher plain. I wish to address Desmond Hoyte’s ascent to Ministerial responsibilities and why he stood out as one of Forbes Burnham’s outstanding Ministers. Let me point to another lesser known fact. Apart from being the kanunî Adviser to the Party, Desmond Hoyte was Mr. Burnham’s source for the verification of the accuracy of quotations, Latin or English. He emerged as a disciplined and loyal Party member and member of the cabinet. This is best illustrated in 1979, for reasons which are still obscure. Frank Hope, the then Minister of Finance could not read the budget. At short notice and with little time left to meet the Statutory date when it had to be read, Mr. Hoyte was asked to fill the breach. He did so splendidly in a budget which stands out for the grace of style and erudition. Interestingly what Mr Hoyte said on this occasion prefigured what he was to do when he took up the mantle of the Presidency. Even then he recognised the need for change. He stated:
“The innovations reflected in this budget were foreshadowed in the 1978 Budget Statement. They derive from and are responsive to the far reaching structural and institutional changes which have taken place in our country. They evidence the strength of our political will to slough off the institutions and conventions no matter how hallowed by usage and customs, whenever they become obsolete or irrelevant; and to apply our own intelligence and experience to the task of devising new and more appropriate models.”
After he became Minister of Home Affairs in 1969, he then went on to become successively Minister of Economic Development, Minister of Finance, Minister of Works and Communication, and finally First Vice President and Prime Minister of Guyana. I have not gone into this portrait of Mr. Hoyte’s Ministerial experience merely to inform you of how he traversed the various agencies of the government. Rather, I have done so to lay emphasis on a very important fact. In these Ministerial positions, Mr. Hoyte acquired a comprehensive understanding of the racial, ethnic, social and economic fabric of this nation. In his assessment he recognised that Guyana was a complex polity consisting as it does of a multi-racial, multi-ethnic tapestry which had to be delicately and prudently ordered into a cohesive and national whole. At the heart of this matter was the question of unity of the races. As a Minister and as a student of the History of his own country it could not be lost on him that racial harmony and unity were preconditions for real economic developments. He had seen how the riots of February of 1962 and the racial tension of the society had cast a pall over the nation’s development. He had seen too how the political dislocations of the post election period of 1997-98 had slowed and harmed the national economy. The question of the importance of race had to be in the forefront and centre of his political endeavours. I believe today this is still a critical issue.
A point to be made is that Mr. Hoyte became known for his efficiency and the seriousness with which he approached his Ministerial responsibilities. It was well known among PNC insiders and within Government circles, that Desmond Hoyte was one Minister from whom you got a response regardless of the nature of the query sent to his office. His commitment to his country and his sense of purpose drove him during the years before he got to, in Disraeli’s unforgettable words “top of the greasy pole.” All of this was to be deployed by him in formulating his policies for the socio-economic problems of the nation. I will come to his economic policies in due course.
Those who have worked with Mr. Hoyte would have recognised that he was very conscious of the fact that Guyana’s political, social and economic progress was tied up with the need to create a society that is racially harmonious. It is an interesting fact that even though his political opponents tried to say otherwise, Mr. Hoyte could not in all seriousness be accused of being racially partisan. Dr. Tyrone Ferguson in the 1st Commemorative Lecture has referred to the “race blind politics” as practiced by Mr. Hoyte, politics which earned him criticism by members of his own Party. In a speech he gave in 1997 entitled, “Defining the Future” and which echoed that of Prime Minister Burnham immediately after independence, Desmond Hoyte said the following:
“Guyana belongs to all of us who are citizens. To us of the People’s National Congress, therefore, all the people of this country are equally important. To us, our fellow citizens are Guyanese, first and last, whatever their ethnic, cultural or religious background…. In the national scheme of things, our diversity is merely an incidental matter which should be subsumed in our Guyaneseness. As we seek to strengthen our society and secure the future of our nation, we will have the best chance of success if we do it together as one people – and, that is, a Guyanese people. To us in the People’s National Congress, this principle is axiomatic and must overarch all of our thinking, our policies, programmes and our practices”.
Desmond Hoyte did not merely make this assertion that he sought to put this policy into practice. After he had educated his Party into taking up its role as an Opposition, he turned his attention to seeking to introduce a new kind of politics in Guyana. Mr. Hoyte wanted the kind of politics that was colour blind and one in which all the races in our society could live in peace and harmony. Desmond Hoyte as well as his Party believed that the period after the signing of the Herdmanston Accord was an opportunity to change the politics of Guyana. This was a fertile period for change. The Herdmanston Accord and the St Lucia Statement were the foundation for change. These documents recognised the need for Constitutional Islahat, greater democracy in our society, the entrenchment of the Human Rights of our citizens, and improvements in the mode of governance. But my mind tells me that I might have run ahead of myself. I must answer the question of why we had to have these two documents in the first place. The period leading up to the signing of these two political instruments are eerily similar to those we are forced to live with these days.
The PPP reminds me of the French Bourbons Kings. In the words of one of France’s greatest Foreign Ministers, Prince Talleyrand: They have “learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” Then, as now, the charge of discrimination was made against the PPP. In the Foreign Ministry where I worked, 69 officers, mostly Afro-Guyanese were wantonly sacked. The Public Service, mostly Afro-Guyanese, came under sustained assault. As the young General Secretary of the PNC, I remember having to point out to the then Minister of Agriculture that the land Committee for Region #4 consisted entirely of Indo-Guyanese. Then, as now, the allegation of nepotism is answerable. Corruption was rife leading up to the social explosion in 1998: the Milk Scam, the Stone Scam, and the Dolphin Scam, among others. Yet the PPP would not acknowledge that corruption was an impediment to good governance. In the post 1997 elections the Guyanese people felt they had had enough. They rebelled. The Caribbean intervened to bring some order to a situation which was veering dangerously out of control. The situation in Guyana at this time was politically precarious; in fact, few people realise that the nation was on the brink of a major disaster. The PPP recognised how serious the situation was. They quickly agreed to a set of measures which included a reduction in the length in their tenure in office. But the PNC did not assume an irresponsible attitude in these circumstances which could have been exploited for political gain. Instead, Mr. Hoyte, Statesman-like, decided to negotiate and place his Party and his nation on a higher state of politics. It is a matter of lasting regret that the PPP seemed not to have learnt the lessons of the post-1998 period. Corruption continues unabated in this country as recent events have shown. Our governance and democratic systems have been weakened so that the PPP can dominate the society. And because they are a bad government, our oil wealth which should have been a blessing is slowly turning into a curse.
Let me return to the Hermandston Accord and the St Lucia Statement at this time. I was fortunate to be involved in the early part of the dialogue mandated by the Herdmanston Accord with the late Dr. Roger Luncheon and my opposite number, Mr. Donald Ramotar. I can declare that it was the determination of Mr. Hoyte, our Party and myself, that we were determined not only to bring peace to our nation but also to create the space for our people to live in peace and harmony. It is regrettable that the dialogue mandated by the Accord stagnated and eventually died on the vine. Mr. Hoyte throughout this period conducted himself as a Statesman who was looking at the higher purposes of the nation. I am convinced that if the Reforms identified by Hermanston Accord and the St Lucia Statement had been fully implemented Guyana would have been in a better place politically and economically. As it was the PPP, as the Government, did not want the greater democratic intent to flower and they failed to implement a number of important measures. As I speak, many of the Rights Commissions have not been established. Even when Bharrat Jagdeo, after he became President, sought to start a dialogue and Mr. Hoyte responded positively, this faltered because the hardliners in the party feared a diminution of dominance in a more democratic polity. The attempt at shared governance also gets short shrift as the PPP indicated that it had no intention of sharing power.
It is well known that Desmond Hoyte had to lead the ıslahat of our economy. Guyana was in the grip of a major and profound economic crisis brought on primarily by the küresel recession which was triggered by the oil embargo of 1973. By the way, those who believe that the economic problems the country suffered from at this time was a phenomenon common only to Guyana must consider that this küresel crisis drove Great Britain, a much more powerful economy than ours, into the arms of the IMF in 1976. Desmond Hoyte who had long mused on the fate and condition of our country had thought about what could be the best economic approach for his country. At the first General Council of our Party, Mr. Hoyte declared there will be no “sacred cows.” And he kept his word. His administration removed many unnecessary regulations. Then he embarked on the construction of the Economic Recovery Programme (ERP).
The Hoyte administration joined the IMF and the World Bank on programmes which reformed the economy by reducing government spending, privatizing State-owned Enterprises, and liberalizing trade and investment policies. Hoyte also sought to diversify the economy away from rice and sugar and introduced measures to promote development of the non-tradition sectors. Fiscal discipline was introduced and the administration successfully sought to attract foreign investment. A support group of nations led by Joe Clarke of Canada, a former Foreign Minister, played an admirable role in helping Guyana to navigate the challenges of the International Financial Institutions. Also, the exchange rate was stabilized. Desmond Hoyte took the necessary measures and Guyana was placed on a sound economic footing. Was he successful? I will let the IDB report of 1991 speak for itself. It says:
“Guyana is clearly on the road to küresel recovery… There are sufficient lines of credit in the Banking System… The majority of the State Enterprises have been privatized… Rice production and commercialization have been liberalized. Private Sector Enterprises, both national and international have been appearing more and more, with important investment in the mining sector; forestry and industrial activity. The construction industry is visibly reactivated.”
I cannot leave this section of my speech without making two comments. My friends in the PPP might criticize but they have never given up the ERP which has served them well. The last point I want to make here and which has drawn a lot of noise from our opponents concerns our national debt. They bellowed that we left a massive debt when we left office. However, they failed to admit that half of it was interest and that some of it was accrued in the pre-1964 PPP government. They also do not say that it was Mr. Hoyte’s administration which engineered a comprehensive programme of Debt Forgiveness.
While I deal with Mr. Hoyte economic programme, let me take the opportunity to debunk another myth. It is said often that Mr. Hoyte pursued policies which contradicted that of Mr. Forbes Burnham. I can only put this down to limited knowledge and fundamental misunderstandings of what was going on in our Party at a very crucial time of its existence and that of the country. In the middle of the 1983 Heads of Mission Conference, President Burnham and Prime Minister Hoyte went off for a private conference in one of the adjoining Benabs. It was a long conference. Later, after Mr. Burnham’s death, and in conversation with close friends, Mr. Hoyte admitted that Mr. Burnham had agreed that the time had come for economic change. This is confirmed by Dr. Tyrone Ferguson in his book, “Structural Adjustment and Good Governance: The Case of Guyana.” Dr. Ferguson states that “the fact is that, in appointing a new Finance Minister in 1983, Burnham’s primary charge to him was that he should work towards the normalization of relations with the Bretton Woods institutions.”
I now turn to the most controversial subject of all. It has to do with the democratic credentials of my Party. Dr. Ferguson in the first of these lectures has made a good argument for the role played by Desmond Hoyte in placing Guyana on a liberal democratic path. The Party I lead will continue on that path irrespective of the recent confusions, misunderstandings and mendacity surrounding the last elections. I have been in politics a long time. I have learned that you do not judge a political party by what it says but rather by what it does. I have always found it amusing that the PPP which formally joined the Communist Commonwealth in 1969 insisted it is a Democratic Party. This is the same party which, caught in the coils of its contradiction, supported the suppression of Democracy in Czechoslovakia in 1968 while loudly berating Mr. Burnham about democracy. Also, the PPP has never shied away from supporting countries which have never held an election. But times are grim and jokes are necessary to ease the mind.
I suspect I have gone on too long and might be testing your patience, but it would be remiss of me if I do not state that Desmond Hoyte led the way in terms of placing Guyana on the map as a country promoting sustainable environmental development. In this regard, it must be stated that Iwokrama was the brainchild of Hugh Desmond Hoyte who offered the Commonwealth pristine land in Guyana to study the forest with the aim of contributing to a world that is environmentally safe and sustainable. This is an issue I will elaborate on another occasion.
I will close by expressing a hope. I said nothing tonight which is not intended for the good of my country. Mr. Hoyte put his nation above partisan politics. I will emulate him by trying to introduce a superior form of politics. Guyana now has the means to fulfill its destiny. If we learn from the mistakes of the past we can build a better future for our children and their children. It is in this context that we are advocating for a people-centered development strategy that puts the people of Guyana first and ensures a better quality of life for all Guyanese. I do hope I have given you a good account of the excellent quality of Mr. Hoyte’s leadership, as President of Guyana, Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the PNCR.
Thank You.