One-party state
It is seven days now that Guyana is being managed without its parliament playing a role in the management process. No one knows how long this unsatisfactory situation will last, but the people of Guyana have the knowledge that the nightmare will have to end in six months. This state of affairs arose because the President decided to invoke a provision of the constitution that enabled him to prorogue the 10th Parliament. In other words, the government decided to suspend the representatives of the people, as if they were schoolchildren, from engaging in the management of the business of this country. The curiosity and tenacity of the 10th parliament, a hallmark of democracy and an outcome of the 2011 general elections, had become a bugbear for the government which decided that democracy was too much to handle and finally chose to declare openly its preference to rule Guyana as a dictatorship and a one-party state. The economic consequences of that choice are of interest to this article.
True feelings
The prorogation of the 10th Parliament is a historic event in the young life of an independent Guyana with both political and economic ramifications for the future of the nation. Two years short of Guyana’s 50th anniversary as an independent nation, the PPP/C government has decided to reveal its true feelings about how the lives of Guyanese should be managed. The drastic political decision of President Ramotar equals his drastic economic decision
