The nation breathed a collective sigh of relief when the general election in August 2006 was held in calm and peace. It was a proud achievement. I was in Canada at the time and remember getting phone calls from friends of more than one persuasion whose common theme, after the initially expressed elation or disappointment, was that they felt good to be Guyanese. What had been feared as an inevitable ordeal of competing accusations and disruptive recriminations had been instead a celebration of democratic maturity.
The aftermath continued to lift the heart – acceptance of the results by the losers, assurances of fair and inclusive governance by the winners. The mood of political d
