FORBES Burnham was one of the founding fathers of Guyana’s independence. Yesterday, August 6, his party and supporters held observances to mark 30 years since his untimely passing in 1985. Since his death, Guyana and the world have changed. Guyana has moved from a socialist-oriented political economy to one that is heavily weighted in the direction of a neo-liberal market economy. Were Burnham to come back today he would hardly recognise Guyana.
Gone are his ‘Feed, Clothe and House Yourself’ thrust, his ‘Free Education from Nursery to University’ and his ‘National Service.’ Gone are his robust Regional Integration and Non-Aligned foreign policy. Gone is the Guyanese national pride that he championed.
Burnham would be shocked at what Guyana has become. But more than anything else, Burnham would be shocked that he is not recognised. Not many Guyanese know of him beyond a name to be invoked as an attack on political opponents or as a badge of recognition for some who feel leaderless. In the recent Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry, his name was invoked as the author of assassination.
During the election campaign his name was invoked as the author of doom.
While political leaders must be held responsible for what transpired under their watch, that has to be done without the rancor and hyper-partisanship that often accompany our political conversations. Burnham made some serious mistakes that have sullied his reputation. But he also did some positive things that are often lost in the one-sided debate about him.
In the end we fail as a nation to move beyond our ethnic and partisan prison-politics.
Burnham’s supporters have to come to grips with the fact that Burnham governed at a time when the world was even more complex than it is now.

With the Cold War raging, the ethnic pot boiling at home, and the contestation of the meaning of independence by a younger intellectual generation, the leader had to make some crucial decisions about balancing those imperatives. That Burnham came down on the side of centralised rule is uncontestable. And in so doing he ended up where the logic of centralised rule takes leaders.
On the other hand, Burnham’s detractors have to understand that Forbes Burnham was a nationalist who sought to create a new nation free from the dependency that haunts post-colonial societies. He sought to create a political economy that catered to the poor in our midst, to give them more opportunities to realise a life free from social marginalisation. He sought to grapple with the perennial ethnic problem in word and deed.
So on this death anniversary of one of our great leaders, let us commit ourselves to finding a narrative that acknowledges our leaders’ mistakes without defining them by those mistakes. That narrative must also highlight the leaders’ accomplishments not outside of their blemishes but as part of their larger praxes.
Forbes Burnham has been dead for 30 years now. Yet many of the challenges he confronted are still with us. It is easy to demonise him, but what have we learned? If there were food shortages while he governed, today there are still shortages of social equality, scrupulous governance and governmental dignity. If Burnham stifled dissent, the leaderships have today turned that into an industry. It is time we be honest to ourselves.