Last Monday's election in Guyana ended almost 23 years' rule by the mainly Indo-Guyanese People's Progressive Party (PPP.)
It was "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life," as the Duke of Wellington said after beating Napoleon at Waterloo, just 200 years ago next month.
In the last Guyanese election in 2011, the PPP took 48.6 per cent of the votes, and won. Last week, they got 49.1 per cent, and lost. More votes–less win? Makes sense? Yes, if you've read Guyana's constitution.
The PPP was ousted by a coalition of two opposition parties–a Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance for Change (AFC.)
In 2011, APNU and the AFC fought the election separately. They took 51.1 per cent of the vote between them–enough for a single-seat majority in Parliament.
But with opposition votes split, the PPP was the largest single party. Under Guyana's constitution, it took the presidency and formed the government.
This time, the AFC and APNU ran as a single list. They squeaked ahead of the PPP, with 50.4 per cent of the votes–a lower percentage than last time, but enough for APNU's David Granger to be the new president. The result was close, but clear.
It was a long, nasty campaign.
It began last November, when the former president, Donald Ramotar, shut down the National Assembly to forestall a no-confidence vote. That's a step beyond excluding the opposition leader.
In March–one week after the election date was set–lone political activist Courtney Crum-Ewing was shot dead; three bullets to the head and one to the neck.
The president afterwards described the dead man as a "nuisance." And the murder culprits? As they say: "Investigations are continuing."
Days before the poll, Indo-Guyanese villagers at Enterprise, to the east of Georgetown, spray-painted two donkeys with the opposition colours, then beat them within an inch of their lives. One of the donkeys was pregnant. Nice?
On polling day, Afro-Guyanese opposition supporters in the Georgetown district of Sophia stoned a pastor's house, suspecting him (wrongly) of electoral cheating. They set eight vehicles on fire, and a stable. I don't know if there were any horses inside.
Both Guyanese leaders might have echoed what Wellington said about his own troops: "I don't know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but by God, they terrify me."
Might have: if some of them weren't busy stirring the pot.
Guyana has a long, long history of racial hatred, going back 60 years and more. Riots in 1964 left perhaps 160 dead, with thousands forced to flee their homes.
From 1964 to 1992, the unlamented Forbes Burnham and his successor Desmond Hoyte locked the PPP out of power through a series of blatantly rigged elections. The economy collapsed; for years, basic imported goods like cheese and wheat flour were unobtainable.
The core of APNU is the rebranded descendant of Forbes Burnham's People's National Congress. In its election campaign this year, the PPP played repeatedly on ancestral fears about the bad old days.
And did so with some success. In its ethnic stronghold of Region Six, the PPP increased its share of the vote by more than five per cent.
But observers from the Carter Centre were "deeply concerned about the provocative rhetoric." They condemned "any attempt to sow fear and distrust among Guyana's ethnic groups."
The media monitoring unit of the Elections Commission said an editorial in the state-owned Guyana Chronicle was "politically extremist and telegraphed a pernicious and sinister intent to create unnecessary fear, tension and insecurity."
The PPP also did well in Amerindian communities of the remote interior, where the power of patronage is strong.
But after a full generation in power, the party looked increasingly arrogant. Accusations of malpractice abounded on all sides.
On the list of proposed MPs were the relatives of the ruling elite–the sons of the current president and three former ministers; the daughters of the home affairs minister, the cabinet secretary and the presidential adviser; the sports minister's wife; and the works minister's sister.
Afro-Guyanese APNU supporters saw this election as a chance to end what they saw as racial dominance by the PPP.
In this highly charged atmosphere, turnout was almost 20 per cent higher than in 2011.
So, what happened? Another spin of the racial wheel? Or a break with the past?
Hope lies with the Alliance for Change, the junior partner in the new coalition, formed ten years ago, and multi-racial in leadership and outlook.
The coalition agreement gives the influential post of prime minister to the AFC's Moses Nagamootoo. The party will have 40 per cent of the cabinet posts, and 12 of the 33 coalition seats in the National Assembly.
That's the upside. On the downside, the PPP is claiming it lost through fraud. On Thursday evening–three days after the close of polls–Ramotar still refused to concede defeat. Waiting in the wings meanwhile are Guyana's powerful drug lords.
David Granger has won a narrow victory. But he has plenty more battles to fight.