TOMORROW, Guyana will bury Hugh Desmond Hoyte, its second executive president and second leader of the People's National Congress (PNC) since its formation by Forbes Burnham.

As it was for Burnham, who died of heart failure while undergoing surgery at the Georgetown Hospital in August 1985, and Cheddi Jagan, who also died from heart failure while undergoing surgery in the USA in March 1997, Hoyte, who suffered a heart attack at home last Sunday morning, will be honoured with a State funeral.

The government and the PNC/R have been co-operating since Hoyte's death in the arrangements for tomorrow's funeral at the Parliament Building before the late PNC/R leader is finally laid to rest at 'The Seven Ponds', also known as 'Place of the Heroes' in the Botanic Gardens.
It is fitting that Hoyte be eulogised, as is being done in various quarters and not just the party he inherited from Burnham, for his positive contributions. Hailing him as a statesman, a quality he demonstrated in his seven years' extended presidency.

As the first former head of state of post-independent Guyana to be given a State funeral, Hoyte will be remembered fondly for his significant initiatives during his 1985-1992 presidency.
The other side of him, as opposition leader from 1992 to the time of his death, stands in sharp contrast, more as a warrior politician of divisive, confrontational politics, than the statesmanship for which he is being hailed in death.
If ever a post-independent political leader of Guyana revealed a sharp contrast in his personality in political style and policies, it would be Hoyte. But with the passage of time, other and more accurate evaluations would be made.

A fierce, articulate opponent of the governing People's Progressive Party (PPP), the 73-year-old lawyer-politician's finest contribution to post-independent Guyana was the dismantling of the legacy of crooked electoral arrangements and a poorly run state-controlled economy inherited from Burnham's maximum leadership rule.
But Hoyte was also wise enough to stay with Burnham's very positive policy of firm commitment to Caricom, and had the opportunity to host a summit meeting in 1986 amid raging controversies over the conduct of the 1985 general election into which he had, for the first time, led the PNC.

That was the last national election designed to ensure yet another "victory", at all cost, for the PNC with whose "party paramountcy" politics Hoyte himself was one of the leading advocates and implementers. After all, he had played a key role also in the framing of what came to be known as the 'Burnhamnist' constitution of Guyana.
By October 1992, under the reformed electoral system he had agreed to with Dr Jagan, and former United States president, Jimmy Carter, coupled with the prevailing new regional/international environment, it was all over for Hoyte and the PNC in terms of the state power that the party successively held from December 1964.
International observers had deemed the 1985 election that brought Hoyte to power as "crooked as barbed wire".

When Burmham died on August 6, 1985, and he became the second executive president and new leader of the PNC, Hoyte was to pay tribute to him as "a master-builder" and "creative genius" who had left "a legacy of solid and enduring achievement".
Within two years of leadership of the PNC and as head of state and government, he was ready to show the foresight and courage to begin the process of dismantling an economy ruined under the heavy hand of what then passed as "state capitalism" with its attendant widespread suffering of the Guyanese people struggling to combat shortages of basic commodities.

The pursuit of electoral reform that, ironically, was to finally result, on October 5, 1992, in a new dispensation of governance based on the freely expressed will of the country's eligible voters, capped the most shining moment of Hoyte's presidency.
History will indeed honour him for his vision and courage to make a fundamental break with the legacy of his perceived "master-builder", the "creative genius" under whose leadership he held some of the most important ministerial portfolios and eventually rose to be prime minister and a vice-president.

Dismantling of Burnham's crooked method of gaining and retaining power, after one more successful implementation of that method, five months after his leader's death, was one outstanding achievement of Hoyte's presidency and positive, conciliatory politics from which the nation as a whole benefitted.
Hoyte's own legacy as head of the PNC and leader of the opposition, most decidedly contrasts with the statesmanship he displayed as president. What may stand at the present time on the debit side would be the ongoing boycott of Parliament that he had instituted nine months ago, and failure to sign on to the joint anti-crime communiqué produced by the three-member civil society representatives.

Earlier, his role in a shocking hero's funeral for one of the country's best known and feared criminals, called "Blackie", whose coffin was draped with the national flag, was a very sad, unexpected leadership example of one who had distinguished himself in office as president.
The saddest period of his leadership in opposition would be the crusading destablisation politics he relentlessly pursued, even as it was proving costly to his own party, eventually declaring the PNC/R's intention to make Guyana "ungovernable" under the leadership of President Bharrat Jagdeo.

Tomorrow, President Jagdeo, whose administration has arranged, in co-operation with the PNC, the State funeral, will join others in paying tribute to Desmond Hoyte.
When the funeral is over and the Caricom leaders and other dignitaries expected for the occasion would have returned home, the challenging task of ensuring a most suitable choice to succeed Hoyte must be faced with courage and a sense of the leadership qualities Guyana needs at this time of criminal rampage and ongoing racial/political divisions.
I had written previously that for all his known and perceived faults or shortcomings, Hoyte was perhaps the best the party could offer in leadership. Now that he is gone, some of the names being mentioned as possible successors only serve to underscore that view.

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