Many thoughts flooded my memory during the first days of this week. For starters, memories of the 1992 elections came flooding back. Hundreds were disenfranchised at the polls on October 5, 1992.
The elections should have been held two years earlier. However, with the help of a lobbyist in Washington, DC, Paul Reichler, the PPP succeeded in getting those elections postponed. The late President Jimmy Carter was wooed, and the Carter Centre became involved.
The first order of business was to change the Elections Commission. That is how the commission, as currently structured, came into being. President Jimmy Carter proposed the structure that operates today.
This structure was supposed to have been in place for a year, until Guyana fashioned a proper system. The reality is that, after more than three decades, the composition remains.
Except for the period when Dr Steve Surujbally was chairman, the commission has been operating along political lines.
In 1992, with the help of the United States, the PPP came to office. Many are not convinced that the PPP won those elections. Dr Cheddi Jagan became president, and that was the last time the Opposition Leader was present at the swearing-in of a president.
Dr Jagan set about lowering the exchange rate, which at the time was $120 to the US dollar. A few businessmen decided to respond to Dr Jagan’s call for a lower exchange rate. That was a disaster. Smart people rushed to buy US dollars at the lower rate, which was artificially set at $90 to the US dollar.
Four days later, the scheme collapsed. Those who bought US dollars at the lower rate made a killing.
The National Awards began in 1970. It was a ceremony held in May. For a brief while, it was shifted to October 5, dubbed the return of democracy.
That ceremony disappeared soon after. It was not until David Granger became president in 2015 that the National Awards ceremony became a part of national life.
Needless to say, it disappeared again when the PPP returned to office in 2020. Many things also disappeared. One of them was fair elections.
The findings of the 2020 elections are being revealed during a trial of some people not known to be PPP supporters, for electoral fraud.
Corruption has reached unprecedented heights. It is now said to be endemic. Rich people are emerging at a steady rate.
But even before October 5, 1992, there was another incident that had far-reaching implications. Four men placed a bomb on a Cubana airliner. The plane exploded off the coast of Barbados on October 6, 1976. Thirteen Guyanese died.
Most of them were students heading to Cuba to pursue higher education. I had travelled to Jamaica the week before. That plane exploded on Wednesday, October 6, 1976. I left Guyana on another airline on Wednesday, September 29.
October 6 was a bitter day in the life of the nation. Parents lost their children; one husband lost his wife, and a little child, Sabrina Harripaul, died.
For a while, Guyana remembered that disaster every year. It was a high-profile event. The central theme was Lest We Forget. The observance is very low-key today. The Cubans have never forgotten, neither have the Barbadians.
A monument to the victims has been erected in the compound of the University of Guyana. It came years after that aircraft bombing.
Terrorists destroyed the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001. The United States has been honouring those killed ever since.
Pearl Harbour was bombed on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese launched a surprise attack. There is a memorial every year. The landing on Normandy beach during the Second World War on June 6, 1944, is another annual observance.
Guyanese have all but forgotten the terrorist act of October 6, 1976. But that is how the nation is. It forgets quickly. The worst disaster in Guyana’s history, the sinking of the MV Barima, would have been forgotten had the relatives of the victims, with support from the political opposition, not insisted on keeping the issue alive.
Bodies are still trapped in the sunken vessel. Initially, the Government was bent on allowing the vessel to remain at the bottom of the Atlantic. Public pressure pushed the Government to have it refloated. But even that seems to be a half-hearted effort.
Tenders went out for salvaging efforts. Some companies were shortlisted, but not much more has happened.
The longer the vessel remains underwater, the greater the deterioration. The vessel was in a state of deterioration when it set sail for Port Kaituma on July 18, 2026.
One can suppose that if the vessel ever comes up, the Government will blame its condition on the length of time the MV Barima rested on the ocean floor.
It has been established that the vessel was overloaded with both passengers and cargo.
Survivors have reported that the cargo was far in excess of what should have been aboard. People are reporting that the Ministry of Works insisted that some heavy equipment be placed aboard the vessel for transportation to Port Kaituma.
The relatives want even the bones of their dead. They also want the Commission of Inquiry to examine the evidence. They want the commissioners to see the state of the vessel.
If the Government has its way, the MV Barima disaster would go the way of so many things in Guyana.
