ABSTRACT
The University of Guyana reopened in January amidst turmoil and political strife. The government reorganized its information and newspaper services to improve Guyana’s image. Making a mockery of Guyana’s legal system, the new law decreed that certain parts of the earlier legislation should now be regarded as never having been enacted. The military seizure of power by sergeants and other noncommissioned officers in neighboring Surinam in late February 1980 sent a tremor of alarm through People’s National Congress breasts in Guyana. The government-run Guyana Broadcasting Service now had a complete monopoly of the airwaves. The prime minister muttered that he had no objection to foreign observers, but Guyana would conduct its own elections. Several moderate Caribbean governments, Barbados and Antigua in particular, which had demanded elections from Maurice Bishop’s revolutionary regime in Grenada, were strangely silent over events in Guyana.
