Desmond Hoyte: A no-nonsense man

Posted January 19th. 2003 by Eusi Kwayana.

"Things are happening!" The new President is upbeat and elated, smiling, sure of himself, as he goes to the mike with a sheet of paper in hand. This was Mr Hoyte's mode of breaking good news to the nation; the news people wanted to hear. He announced it with glee.

As Lincoln Van Sluytman argued years ago, most non-PNC politicals could not understand the day-to-day popularity - as distinct from electoral - which greeted the then President Hoyte and which misled him about electoral outcomes. Even the long-complaining PPP supporters with tons of complaints against the government were more than relieved.

After the 1992 elections Van Sluytman argued inside the WPA that we were condemning conditions which the mass of the people already saw as changing under Hoyte. A few of these were the relaxation of food bans, a major factor, the 'opening up of work' with Omai and others.
Others were impressed with the new policy toward newspapers, privatisation, the move to improve telephone services and, let us not forget, the closing down of Pln Hope as a forced labour location.
I hope that the late Mr Desmond Hoyte's widow, political colleagues and supporters and also his friends and his biographer will understand that I write 'without malice' of a man I never knew or tried to know closely. This is in spite of the fact that he taught school History at ASCRIA's evening classes in Third street, Georgetown, for a few months, before joining the Cabinet.

'Things are happening!'
Perhaps it is my interest in drama that makes me remember such little things, the atmosphere and the stage business. "Things are happening!" He chanted it with an air of hope and promise. And the mood of expectancy would be felt. This was when, from the stage of office or power, he felt able to deliver actual goods, like Omai or Booker Tate, or wheaten flour.

When he became a real contender for office, after electoral defeat, as in the remarkable year 2001, he galvanized his supporters with, "Are your ready?" And the same air of expectation would be felt. Cries of triumph would rend the air. After his previous surgery his voice had lost its natural ring, but the words of certainty were enough.
A rather lonely-seeming figure, some say a retiring person, an introvert, he could galvanise his crowd with the sheer confidence, energy and finality with which he delivered some pronouncement, some shift of policy or some new measure. He put things forward as though there could be no alternative, although he insisted on the need for keen debate in the National Assembly, in which he took special interest. He wanted an actively participating (but consenting) opposition. It was he who introduced the annual recess, perhaps a transfer of training from his trade-union practice, finding an equivalent for paid vacation, and of course falling in line with universal parliamentary practice. He had reinvented himself as a public figure, from technocrat to Political Leader.

Under his watch, Parliament was never fully regular in the spirit of its rules. I was one of its foremost critics, taking the Standing Orders (rules) of the assembly to mean what they said.
Yet, compared with what had gone before and what was to come after he left office, it now stands out for a few features. Whereas after 1992 and the coming back of the PPP, private members' days were a blue moon, they were held seasonally under Hoyte's watch.

Things did not "happen" by sheer good will. Opposition pressure had to be applied, but Hoyte had a way of shifting when things appeared absurd or ridiculous. We started a series of persistent representations that private members' motions and questions were buried at the pleasure of the Speaker. The rules prevent the publication of the motion or question in the media before it appears on a Notice Paper.
I directed my protests at the responsible parliamentary officials and sought no back-door influence. Dramatically, a new thing began to happen. On the fifth day after a motion or question arrived at the Clerk's Office, it appeared on a Notice Paper. If Parliament was not sitting, the Clerk circulated the Notice Paper. If the press carried the notice, the public would be alerted and begin to form and express opinions. At a crucial moment in opposition he was, last year, to walk out and stay away from these processes.

By the time he came to office it was clear to government, opposition and civil society that the grandiose constitutional assembly, the Supreme Congress of the People, was a high-sounding extravagance. President Hoyte sought creatively to give a reason for existence to this body reputed to be crafted by him and the former Attorney General, Dr Shahabuddeen. He made it the forum at which he would "report on foreign policy and relations" after each of his official visits overseas.

Is it correct to say that he felt and presented himself as a stern ruler? Surely he did. He was the first government leader to speak out against kick-down-the-door banditry, promising to "hang them high." He had low tolerance of crime. Thus the regime had moved from total silence on these crimes to capital punishment for murder. His attitude to shootings by the police was not new and showed no reform. I remember pressing in the Assembly for imposition of the United Nations Code for Law Enforcement Officers when only one member on the government benches admitted knowing anything about it.

It seems that Mr Hoyte was the most open of leaders with his illnesses. Former secretaries and other employees, reporters, the public all knew them. This may suggest that for all his imposing manner, he had a sense of his mortality. If he had, it did not bother him. Few could be more dismissive of others with whom he disagreed. Few also, as some have testified, could be more engaging.

I have testimonies of people who have received both forms of treatment from him. One suspicion which I can hardly prove, is that he identified intellectual peers or equals and dealt with such persons accordingly. His voice could rise in temperature. He once publicly dismissed people who criticised his human rights record as "hominids." Some of these gems should not be erased. During the l985 election campaign he was ruffled because many felt his reforms had not gone far enough and were too little and too late. He had mainly abolished the overseas vote. He dismissed the Opposition Leader, Dr Jagan's appeals to him for further reforms as whinings, and simply signed his laws and orders.

In those years, until polling day 1992, he seemed to be taking his stress in stride, managing it without going under, exploding as a safety valve.

On the eve of the 1985 general election in the same vein President Hoyte declared, "Those two Bishops should be on their knees, praying to their God for forgiveness." Unforgettable, but after a hunger strike of mine against the suffering the population was going through in a gas shortage, I issued a statement full of indignation and aimed at the callous authorities headed 'Make the Devil Run.' It included repeated statements in the Rastafari idiom that the wicked would burn. It did not incite unlawful action. The people I was trying to defend understood my poetry quite well. But there was an outcry from the petrol owners and from the press. Most of my political colleagues were put on the defensive and felt that my statement was out of order. I understood that I was talking to two audiences and issued a statement explaining that my message had no criminal intent. I emphasised that we were promoting only non-violent, peaceful struggle.

President Hoyte pitched in, "They say they are peaceful. It had better be."
His self-picture since his entry into Parliament was of a no-nonsense man. He reacted with spirit to those who crossed his path. A much younger man I knew made him a figure of speech and called him nothing but "ashtray." As President he saw himself as one who was in charge, a stern leader like those in the model, who would put down evil and who would keep the peace. Remember that for his coat of arms he laid aside the cayman and chose the Jaguar rampant!
Political analysts will have a field-day, now that his political life is ended.
This article will end with discussion of two issues, one of them scandalously controversial, the other I hope, less so.
When Linden London was cornered and taken dead at Toucan Suites, it transpired rapidly that he had been shot with his hands in the air, in the posture of surrender, a surrender after negotiations.

After his funeral, the media reported that the Opposition Leader, Mr Hoyte, had attended his funeral. Upstanding people in the society could not think of anything more devilish. Those who had violated the letter and spirit of the constitution became accusers. No one reflected that Mr Hoyte had a public reason for attending, whatever his private feelings or relations to the victim may have been. He had sworn to uphold the constitution and here was a brazen violation of all codes of capture. I do not know the protocol of the national flag, being not very turned on by heraldry. I want to know why a political leader cannot attend a funeral of such a victim, even an outlaw, if only to make manifest his disagreement with the way the victim died.

The next issue brings us back to the state of Guyana and where we might have been, or might not have been. Before the end of the first post-Burnham parliament a WPA motion for a national dialogue had at last been debated, after being seconded by the PPP and passed unanimously. It called for a dialogue of political parties and "all social forces." It appealed to the Government and others because it proposed economic reforms. It appealed to the PPP because it proposed democratisation. It really was the essence of the Rodneyite civil rebellion brought to the floor of the house. It spoke of racial insecurity, local government, and covered the whole range of social concerns. If it had gone through, it would have been a bold step in self-determination. It was an attempt to argue our differences among ourselves as a people and come to resolutions to be implemented.

President Hoyte embraced the resolution and began with zeal to implement it. He invited a number of organisations to the Office of the President to discuss the shape of the discussions. It opened at the University of Guyana, but fell apart. Historians should enquire why the country missed this chance of shaping our own economic and political future. Is there any contrast or comparison between that lost moment and the present agonising hours?

I have said elsewhere that Mr Hoyte's illness was put out of control by multiple political stresses on a person of impaired health. None of us can forget the stormy events of the last few years in which he was central.

"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well... Nothing can touch him further."