Bert Wilkin­son

Don­ald Rabrind­ranath Ramo­tar was sworn in as the sev­enth ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent of Guyana yes­ter­day af­ter­noon at a sim­ple cer­e­mo­ny at the lo­cal "White House" that last­ed less than an hour, but he wast­ed lit­tle time in ac­knowl­edg­ing that his mi­nor­i­ty pres­i­den­cy and Gov­ern­ment could face per­ilous times in the fu­ture as his gov­ern­ing Peo­ple's Pro­gres­sive Par­ty (PPP) no longer con­trols a ma­jor­i­ty in the coun­try's sin­gle-cham­ber par­lia­ment fol­low­ing gen­er­al elec­tions last Mon­day.

Speak­ing as pre­de­ces­sor Bhar­rat Jagdeo, dig­ni­taries and a lawn full of in­vi­tees looked on, Ramo­tar, 61, did not spend too much time on po­lit­i­cal plat­i­tudes but got down to re­al­i­ties very quick­ly by say­ing that it will take a lot of skill and ne­go­ti­a­tion with the two op­po­si­tion groups-A Part­ner­ship For Na­tion­al Uni­ty (AP­NU) with 26 seats, and the Al­liance For Change (AFC) with sev­en-to run the coun­try as the PPP's po­lit­i­cal ri­vals now con­trol the leg­isla­tive agen­da and will even have the op­por­tu­ni­ty of elect­ing a speak­er. He said all sides will have to talk to each oth­er be­cause "this is the on­ly way for­ward. I do not an­tic­i­pate that this process will be easy but I am pre­pared to work be­yond the dif­fi­cul­ties to en­sure that our coun­try does not regress," to ap­plause from in­vi­tees.

The com­bined op­po­si­tion has one more seat than the PPP and will for the first time in two decades not on­ly run the par­lia­men­tary agen­da but will have the choice of de­ter­min­ing who is the Speak­er when the as­sem­bly meets in the com­ing weeks. But even as he works to name a Cab­i­net "in the next 48 hours", the AP­NU is main­tain­ing its street protests to press for an all-part ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the re­sults be­cause it al­leges that vot­er rig­ging and op­er­a­tional dis­crep­an­cies were enough to leave it in doubt as to whether the PPP had won the elec­tions fair­ly.

On Fri­day, thou­sands of pro­test­ers marched through the streets of George­town to the head­quar­ters of the elec­tions com­mis­sion to press its de­mands for all par­ties to be al­lowed to go over their state­ments of polls from vot­ing sta­tions and to send sig­nals to who­ev­er is lis­ten­ing that "the lev­el of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and crim­i­nal­i­ty" that formed part of the al­leged modus operan­di of the Jagdeo ad­min­is­tra­tion will not be tol­er­at­ed in the com­ing months.

And nei­ther the AP­NU nor the AFC did any­thing to stop yes­ter­day's swear­ing in of the fa­ther of three from the west­ern Es­se­qui­bo Re­gion, stay­ing clear of court in­junc­tions and oth­er po­lit­i­cal and ju­di­cial ob­sta­cles to Ramo­tar's as­cen­dan­cy. His wife, three chil­dren and some of his eight sib­lings looked on. Ram­toar's re­sum&ea­cute; says that he nev­er went to high school but had at­tend­ed the Gov­ern­ment Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute af­ter leav­ing pri­ma­ry school and lat­er read­ing for an eco­nom­ics de­gree at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Guyana.

On more than one oc­ca­sion dur­ing his speech he re­ferred to the com­po­si­tion of Par­lia­ment, say­ing that there "will be chal­lenges but we must be pre­pared to work tire­less­ly to en­sure that we do not thwart the le­git­i­mate as­pi­ra­tions of our peo­ple for a high­er stan­dard of liv­ing. "This new arrange­ment in our Par­lia­ment would no doubt test our ma­tu­ri­ty as po­lit­i­cal lead­ers. "It will de­mand that pet­ti­ness be put aside and our na­tion's well be­ing should al­ways be our most im­por­tant guid­ing in­flu­ence," he said.