Robert Corbin

Robert Herman Orlando Corbin was born on 15 February 1948 in Linden, the bauxite mining town on the Upper Demerara River that was then called Mackenzie, in British Guiana. According to the biography read into the record of Guyana's National Assembly in 2012, his father, Vice Dudley Corbin, was a boatbuilder and tug captain who later worked in the bauxite industry, and his mother, Eva Augusta Corbin, had worked in the segregated servant quarters of the expatriate staff of the Demerara Bauxite Company (DEMBA).

Mackenzie in the 1950s was a company town in which the expatriate Watooka compound was reserved for white staff, and local people needed a DEMBA pass to pass through it. Corbin often said that this experience of colonial segregation fashioned his political outlook and set the course of his political life from his youth.

His upbringing was rooted in the Presbyterian church (the Scots church), where he spent many years in the youth ministry and in the Youth for Christ movement. His older brother, Neville Marshall-Corbin, later became the cabaret singer and actor Sol Raye in Britain.

Corbin attended Christianburg Government School and Mackenzie High School, graduating in 1964 at the age of sixteen with passes in all six subjects he sat in the London General Certificate of Education. Because he was too young to be classified as an interim teacher, he first took a lower paid post as a pupil teacher, then joined the civil service as a customs officer working the long room and the waterfront.

He went on to the University of Guyana, where he earned a Diploma in Social Work, and worked as a social worker in hinterland and rural communities. While serving as a full-time politician he continued his studies, taking leave from the National Assembly between 1997 and 2001 to qualify in law. He holds a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of Guyana and the Legal Education Certificate (LEC) of the Council of Legal Education from the Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad and Tobago, and he afterwards practised as an attorney-at-law.

Corbin joined the youth arm of the People's National Congress, then the PNC Youth Organisation and later the Young Socialist Movement (YSM), in the mid-1960s. Between 1966 and 1977 he served at every level, from ordinary member to executive member, General Secretary and National Chairman. He headed the party's youth cadet training and ideological programme at the Cuffy Ideological Institute on the Soesdyke-Linden Highway and led youth brigades on self-help projects around the country. In 1970 he was elected to the PNC's Central Executive Committee and travelled with Guyana's delegation to the Non-Aligned Summit in Lusaka, Zambia.

Party accounts say Forbes Burnham put his name forward as a parliamentary candidate in 1968, only to learn that he was not yet 21 and therefore ineligible. He entered the National Assembly in August 1973 at 25 and sat continuously until October 1997. His posts included Parliamentary Secretary for Cooperatives and National Mobilisation and for Education, Social Development and Culture; Minister of Youth, Sports and National Service; Minister of Regional and National Development; Minister of Local Government; and, as Deputy Prime Minister from 1985 to 1992, responsibility for agriculture, fisheries and forestry and for works, communications and public utilities. At various times he was also the minister responsible for the Guyana Airways Corporation and the Guyana Electricity Corporation. In March 1975 he joined the Guyana National Service march of about 270 kilometres from the Kimbia training centre to Georgetown. He chaired the National Mashramani Celebrations Committee for several years, served on the Guyana Elections Commission, and on one occasion was sworn in to act as President of Guyana.

After the PNC lost the 1992 election, Corbin sat as an opposition MP and Shadow Minister for Works, Communications and Regional Development. He also served the party as Senior Vice Chairman and General Secretary.

Corbin was elected chairman of the People's National Congress Reform at its biennial congress in August 2000, re-elected in August 2002, and returned to Parliament after the 2001 general election. When former President Desmond Hoyte died on 22 December 2002, Corbin became acting party leader, and a special congress elected him Leader of the PNCR on 1 February 2003. On 2 May 2003 he was elected Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly.

He took over at a tense moment. The PNCR had been boycotting Parliament and Guyana was gripped by a crime wave and political unrest. On 6 May 2003 Corbin and President Bharrat Jagdeo signed a joint communique that brought the PNCR back into the Assembly, followed by a follow-up agreement in June and a 16 point programme of "constructive engagement" in September 2003. Within months the process broke down, with the opposition accusing the government of failing to implement what had been agreed, including broadcasting reform.

Corbin led the party into the August 2006 general election on a "One Guyana" platform, his only contest as presidential candidate. The PNCR's defeat put his leadership under scrutiny, but the two prospective challengers withdrew before a contest and his leadership was affirmed at the 2007 congress. As Opposition Leader he pressed for an urgent sitting during the 2005 floods and brought motions on the 2008 Lusignan massacre and on the collapse of the CLICO insurance company. In 2010 he announced he would not be the party's presidential candidate in 2011, and he pursued a broad partnership of opposition forces that became A Partnership for National Unity (APNU). He demitted office as Leader of the Opposition in January 2012, retired from national electoral politics, and was succeeded as party leader by David Granger in July 2012.

Corbin was married to Carol Corbin, who served as a senior officer at the CARICOM Secretariat and at Guyana's Public Utilities Commission. The couple had five children. His brother Charles Corbin confirmed his death in October 2026, and his older brother, the singer and actor Sol Raye (Neville Marshall-Corbin), died in London in 2006, when Corbin delivered the eulogy at his funeral.

A keen sportsman, he was active in athletics and swimming as a young man and kept fit in later life by playing squash. His hobbies included boating, hunting, fishing and horseback riding. Colleagues said that across Guyana people remembered him not only as a youth leader or minister but simply as "Robert". Some years before his retirement from Parliament he was medically evacuated for treatment overseas, and some media outlets wrongly reported at the time that he had died.

Corbin described his politics as shaped by the colonial segregation he saw as a child in Mackenzie and by his Presbyterian upbringing. A protege of Forbes Burnham and Ptolemy Reid and a trusted adviser to Desmond Hoyte, he was a committed nationalist who, as leader, argued for national reconciliation and shared governance between Guyana's two main parties.

In his Christmas message of December 2003 he said he remained convinced that Guyanese could work together to remove "the scourge of racial prejudice and conflict". At the party's 14th Biennial Congress in August 2004 he urged the major parties to "close the pages of the past" and called for a government that was "as broad based as possible". Allies said he frowned on the idea of a "maximum leader" and encouraged open debate within the party. His 2011 New Year message set out a vision of a Government of National Unity including the PNCR.

Corbin spent nearly 36 years as an elected member of Guyana's National Assembly, and his service in the House spanned 38 years. The PNCR and the Working People's Alliance credit him and the late WPA co-leader Rupert Roopnaraine with forming A Partnership for National Unity, and his party credits his advocacy of coalition politics with laying the ground for the APNU and Alliance For Change coalition that won the 2015 general election.

He was the only full-time leader of the PNC to leave the post without becoming President or Prime Minister. Commentators noted that he inherited a party that had lost power and much of its grassroots strength, and that he governed it as "first among equals" rather than in the mould of Burnham. Former Speaker Ralph Ramkarran called him an able parliamentarian, a skilled debater and "unfailingly courteous". In July 2012 the National Assembly, in a rare cross-party gesture, passed a motion recognising his contribution while he was still alive.

In May 2016, as part of the national awards marking the 50th anniversary of Guyana's independence, Corbin was named a recipient of the Cacique's Crown of Honour (CCH), one of the country's national honours, for his long public service as former Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the PNCR. On 12 July 2012 the National Assembly of Guyana unanimously adopted a motion, moved by Volda Lawrence, recognising his contribution to Parliament. At the time he left office he was also a member of the international board of the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Corbin's decade at the helm of the PNCR coincided with one of the most violent periods in modern Guyanese history, including the gang violence of 2002 to 2008 and the Lusignan and Bartica massacres of 2008. The dialogue he began with President Jagdeo in 2003 ended in recrimination, and the PNCR's defeat in the 2006 election led to open questions about his leadership. In 2010 Bishwaishwar Ramsaroop briefly acted in his place. A 2010 Guyana Review assessment said he never enjoyed the authority of Burnham or the public standing of Hoyte, while a 2012 Stabroek News letter writer argued that he had been "maligned and vilified many times over" but never quit on his party or country.

Robert Corbin died on Sunday, 4 October 2026, at the Georgetown Public Hospital in Georgetown, Guyana, after a prolonged illness. He was 78. His brother Charles Corbin confirmed the death. No specific cause of death was made public.

The PNCR and APNU said his death was "an irreplaceable loss" and recalled that during his illness he continued to give advice to the party, extending condolences to his wife Carol, his children, relatives, colleagues and friends. President Irfaan Ali described him as "a political stalwart" who "occupied a place of prominence in public life". Former President Bharrat Jagdeo, who often met him at State House when Corbin was Opposition Leader, said: "Even through difficult and turbulent periods in our country's life, we maintained the ability to speak with one another, a respect that continued beyond our time in office." Funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of writing.