Hugh Desmond Hoyte reached the pinnacle of political power as the result of a series of chance circumstances. Once in the Presidency, however, he left little to chance, but managed the affairs of State with amazing certitude through the most difficult years since Independence. Significantly, he chose “Guyana’s Economic Recovery: Leadership, Will-Power and Vision” as the title of his book which described those eventful years.
By the end of his seven-year presidency in October 1992, Desmond Hoyte had earned the respect of sceptical foreign governments, suspicious party supporters and antagonistic political opponents alike as the architect of Guyana’s economic recovery. His Administration, though seemingly harsh in imposing stringent measures to counter the economic collapse, social instability and political unrest of the mid-1980s, clearly ushered in a period of renewal, reconstruction and reconciliation in the early 1990s. Handpicked by President Forbes Burnham as Prime Minister on the resignation of Dr Ptolemy Reid in August 1984, Desmond Hoyte became President a year later on 6 August 1985, on the sudden death in office of Burnham himself. Dr Reid, who was Deputy Leader of the People’s National Congress (PNC) and would have easily acceded to the leadership of the Party on Mr Burnham’s death, deftly stepped aside, allowing Mr Hoyte to combine the national presidency with party leadership which, given the economic turmoil and political opposition that lay ahead, proved to be an invaluable asset.
Even then, his personal and political opinions were largely unknown, making him one of the most inscrutable members of the PNC hierarchy. Although he had been quietly associated with the PNC since the early 1960s, his reputation was unsullied by involvement in the racial and political “Disturbances” of those years. Mr Hoyte was regarded as an unambitious technocrat, an attorney who advised and assisted rather than as an activist or an ideologue. It was not until 1968, at the age of 39 years, relatively late by Guyanese standards, that he first held public political office as a Cabinet Minister.
His portfolios in the main were economic - Finance; Works & Communications; Production; Economic Planning and Economic Development - reinforcing his technocratic image. But, emerging in 1985 as the successor to Forbes Burnham, the charismatic cigar-smoking, brandy-drinking, back-slapping founder of the Party, Desmond Hoyte by contrast appeared to be austere and aloof, the antithesis of the populist leader. In many ways, his seven-year presidency was just that - the reversal of many of the populist and socialist positions of Mr Burnham’s twenty-one year (1964-85) tenure.
But it was as Minister of Finance from 1970 to 1972, and with responsibility for Economic Planning, Economic Development and Production at various times between 1974 and 1985, that Mr Hoyte played a pivotal role in implementing policies that led to Guyana’s economic decline. The spate of nationalisations, impositions of controls and restrictions and other economic measures introduced by the PNC Administration paralysed private enterprise and established a huge State-sector which, eventually, became dysfunctional and had to be dismantled. He must have learnt from his mistakes.
The Guyana over which Desmond Hoyte became President in 1985 was characterized by administrative stagnation; rampant inflation; runaway migration; shortages of consumer goods; the near collapse of social services; a decline in per capita income (well below that of a decade earlier); a debilitating debt burden; occasional surges of crime and banditry; simmering political unrest and, of course, chronic territorial controversies. Within six months, Desmond Hoyte embarked on a thorough re-construction of the Government he inherited.
On the economic front, he re-opened negotiations with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and, assisted by an international support group of donor countries under Canada’s leadership, saw the recommencement of bilateral assistance and re-scheduling of the external debt.
The introduction of the 1989 budget, which launched the stabilization measures, was met by massive opposition, even from his own supporters. Inflation that year soared to 90 per cent; salaries and savings lost value overnight. The trade unions revolted. It required a steady head, a strong hand and a steely mind to steer the country safely through the strictures of the structural adjustment process.
Opposition parties assembled under the Patriotic Coalition for Democracy (PCD); civil society rallied under the Guyanese Action Reform and Democracy (GUARD); and trade unions mobilised under the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana (FITUG) waged a relentless campaign for electoral and economic reform while Party dissidents conspired to block any attempt to do so. Quinquennial elections due in 1990 had to be postponed. After the intervention of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and the Carter Center, Mr Hoyte agreed to the reform measures which eventually, if predictably, led to his own removal from office in October 1992, again, amidst noisy resistance of some of his own supporters.
On the Administrative front, Desmond Hoyte slashed the number of ministries to nine (apart from the Office of the President and the Office of the Prime Minister); appointed a strong cadre of economic advisers, technocratic ministers and permanent secretaries; and trimmed the Public Service, State Corporations and Defence Force, again in the face of opposition by party dissidents. He engaged various sectors of civil society - business, religious, labour, professional - recruiting individuals to councils, commissions and ad hoc committees regardless of their race or political affiliation, thereby confounding local convention and party expectation.
On the foreign front, Mr Hoyte’s policy also reflected the new realist, rather than idealist, approach. Even before the collapse of the eastern bloc, he shifted westwards, overhauling relations with capitalist countries without disrupting traditional ties with communist states such as China and Cuba. But he made neighbouring states his special focus.
Visiting Venezuela, he and President Jaime Lusinchi paved the way for the UN Good Officer process to lower tensions on the territorial controversy, and embarked on a programme of economic co-operation with agreements for the sale of bauxite and the purchase of petroleum. He entered an agreement with President Ramsewak Shankar of Suriname to facilitate petroleum exploration in the disputed zone of the Atlantic. And he hosted a visit by Brazil’s President Jose Sarney, helping to improve strategic relations with the ‘Colossus of the South’.
He strengthened relations with the Caribbean Community, soured after the invasion of Grenada and acrimonious ideological disputes of the early 1980s. In the Commonwealth, he helped to launch the massive environmental project - the Iwokrama International Centre for Rain Forest Conservation and Development.
Desmond Hoyte, clearly, was not a one-dimensional technocrat but a multi-talented statesman of extraordinary ability and vision. His greatest domestic legacy may be the restoration of what the public regards as three essential freedoms - freedom of expression, marked by the removal of obstacles on the press; free and fair elections, which were held in October 1992 and ever since; and a free-enterprise economy marked by the privatization of state-owned businesses and encouragement of foreign investment. In short, he left Guyana in a much better condition than he found it.
At the close of his Presidency, though clearly disappointed at not being re-elected to office, Desmond Hoyte could look back at the accomplishment of having restarted work towards the establishment of a sound foundation for national economic, political and social renewal.
But it was in Opposition, especially since the 1997 elections, that Mr Hoyte entered the final, most misunderstood phase of his political life, largely by leading a series of sustained public protests against the People’s Progressive Party-Civic (PPP-C) Administration. His mission, no doubt, was to ensure good governance and social justice but his methods, and the methods employed by the Administration to oppose them, contributed to the shaking of business confidence, rattling the commercial community and rocking the economy without fully restoring political stability.
In 1998 alone, for example, the Caribbean Community intervened on four occasions in attempts to restore inter-party political relations to normalcy. Although seemingly vindicated by the High Court’s vitiation of the 1997 elections, the effects were ephemeral except, perhaps, for the premature resignation of President Janet Jagan, on grounds of ill health.
The 2001 elections results were also challenged and, after another spate of protests, Mr Hoyte joined President Bharrat Jagdeo in a dialogue process aimed at restoring public order and good governance. That process collapsed and Mr Hoyte led his Party out of the National Assembly.
Both spates of protest culminated in bipartisan accords - Herdmanston and Vlissengen - but, although the results were inconclusive and unsatisfactory, Mr Hoyte’s recent adoption of the doctrine of ‘shared governance’ may yet hold the key to the resolution of the endless PNC-R/
PPP-C political impasse and move the country forward.
Much misunderstood in life, Desmond Hoyte will remain a mystery in death. Was he a democrat who tried to move the country forward to freedom or a demagogue who stirred the atavistic passions of his supporters? Capitalist free marketer who privatized State corporations or socialist central planner? Saviour of the environment by hosting the Commonwealth’s largest environmental project or its destroyer by granting the country’s largest gold-mining and logging concessions? Nationalist leader who attracted support from a wide cross-section of society or a diehard apparatchik who backed partisan interests to the hilt? Dedicated dialogist who sought solutions to problems of governance or disruptive street protester?
These apparent paradoxes make Desmond Hoyte the most enigmatic but pragmatic of Guyana’s six executive presidents. He was a riddle, a complex character whose conduct in and out of office defies facile explanation and it is not easy to answer these questions although there have been many premature attempts to do so. He could be judged best by re-examining the myriad challenges which confronted him and his responses to them. What is clear is that he was unafraid to abandon cherished courses of action once they proved unworkable and, equally, to embrace unpopular solutions once he felt that the outcome would serve the national interest.
In the final analysis, he changed the party, government and country in particular ways. It will be difficult for the PNC-R to find someone to fill the shoes of a determined leader such as Hugh Desmond Hoyte.