Yearbook 2011
Guyana. According to Countryaah official site, presidential elections were held on November 28, all indicating that it was won by Donald Ramotar for the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) government with just under 50% of cast votes over David Granger from A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) with just under 40%. But the announcement of the election results was delayed, prompting suspicion of manipulation of the voting process by the ruling party. Despite accusations of cheating, the election campaign was still judged by observers from the American cooperative organization OAS to have been well-administered, and the election day was calm. In addition, PPP/C was likely to benefit from the fact that the party’s government holdings so far have meant several years of remarkable economic growth – 3.4% in 2010. Ramotar’s victory meant a fifth consecutive term for PPP/ C. Visit ABBREVIATIONFINDER for the acronym of GUY that stands for the country of Guyana.
In the second half of September, the issue of the Esequibo area of western Guiana again sprang up in relations with neighboring Venezuela. The Government of Guiana applied to a UN commission to extend its territorial water boundary to 350 nautical miles off the coast, which was considered by the Venezuelan Government as a provocation given that its historic requirements in the Esequibo area have not yet been settled. Guyana, in turn, claimed that the territorial water boundary had nothing to do with the Esequibo question. The UN Commission will not address this issue until 2012, and after a meeting in Trinidad between the two countries’ foreign ministers, tensions were dampened.
HISTORY
The colonization of the Guyana, which began at the end of the 16th century, when the Dutch settled on the banks of the Essequibo, was consolidated starting from 1621 by the Dutch West India Company. During the Napoleonic wars the Dutch possessions were occupied by the British and definitively assigned by the Congress of Vienna to Great Britain which, in 1831, reunited them in Guyana Britannica. The cultivation of sugar cane, developed in the large coastal plantations that employed African slaves, remained the main activity of the colony even under British rule. After the abolition of slavery and the abandonment of plantations by the Blacks, the British resorted to importing Indian labor and within a century the population of Indian origin became a majority.
After the achievement of independence within the Commonwealth in 1966, the political life of Guyana was dominated by two parties, the People’s National Congress (PNC), of moderate socialist orientation and expression of the population of African origin, and the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), supported by the Indians. The first, led by FS Burnham, former prime minister and from 1980 to his death in 1985, president of the Republic, through elections characterized by serious irregularities, established a virtual monopoly of power until 1992. In that year, regular elections (with the presence of international observers) saw the victory of the PPP which, albeit in an increasingly tense political climate marked by violence, also prevailed in the elections in 1997, 2001, 2006. C. Jagan, president of the Republic until 1997, was succeeded by his wife J Jacan, therefore from 1999 B. Jagdeo, reconfirmed in 2006, and from 2011 D. Ramotar, candidate of the PPP, who however lost the absolute majority in Parliament. Following the elections held in May 2015, MV Nagamootoo of the coalition A Partnership for National Unity (UNPA) assumed the office of premier, and DA.