Last week, I had just finished reading the first ever published biography of Forbes Burnham by Guyanese professor Linden Lewis. The contents were still fresh in my mind when I saw a published letter (last Sunday) by one of the former hierarchical leaders of the WPA, Ms. Bonita Bone-Harris.

Ms Harris’ letter was on the value of teachers and I suspect she had the recent teachers’ strike in mind when she wrote: “One of the outcomes of treating teachers with disrespect both by way of remuneration and how they are treated, is that we are discouraging future generations from entering the teaching profession.”

Ms. Bone-Harris went on to make reference to what happened to her as a teacher in the 1970s but it is the way she put it that caught my eyes, and since the contents of the Burnham biography was still fresh in my mind, the idea came to me to pen this article here. She wrote: “Although driven out of the formal education sector in the late 1970s by the authorities of that time….”
This is putting it mildly as compared to what Professor Lewis described Ms. Bone-Harris as saying when she was pushed out by the Forbes Burnham regime.

Professor Lewis on pages 142-143 reproduced the correspondence of Ms. Bone-Harris to the Ministry of Education that led to her removal from the teaching profession. It is long so I will quote the part I find interesting against the backdrop of her use of the term, “the authorities of the time.”

Here are Ms. Bone-Harris words: “This recent period has been characterised by the sharply escalated levels by the illegal PNC government.”

I cannot understand why Ms. Bone-Harris chose not to say the “Forbes Burnham Government.” Equally important is the description of the Burnham Government as illegal.

If the world did not intervene and put relentless pressure on the APNU+AFC regime which included the WPA, then we would have had had another illegal PNC regime after 2020. I will apologise to Ms. Bone-Harris if she contradicts me, but I have not seen any published condemnation from her on five months of dangerous conspiracies to alter the legal results of the March 2020 elections.

Ms. Bone’s document in the Lewis book is a superb account of what becomes of a country in which people do not have the right to vote. I quote from her correspondence once more: “This illegal regime and all its institutions have no lawful jurisdiction over any individual in this state.”

She offers vivid example of the terrible things an unelected government can do. Ms. Bone-Harris is right about the priceless value of teachers but teachers and all other professions cannot exist in a country where there is a government that cannot be removed by the right to vote.

I became a transformed person with a transformed psyche after I saw what was taking place on Wednesday, March 4, 2020. It was a laceration of my psyche that cannot be put into words. I lived under a presidency that was not elected and occupied by a man who was a narcissist and a megalomaniac (please see my review of the Burnham biography for Tuesday, March 5, 2024, captioned, “Book review: Burnham’s biographer omits Freudian methodology.”).

If Burnham had not died in 1985, I think his belief in his monarchial divinity would have destroyed this country and October 1992 would never have happened. I can understand why someone like Dr. Alisa Trotz chose not to dwell on rigged elections in her column, “In The Diaspora.” She was a child in the 1970s and never lived under an illegal regime.

I could understand why Moray House has never held a symposium on the March 2020 election fiasco. Its administrator, Stabroek News co-owner, Isabelle DeCaires was a mere child in the 1970s and knows nothing about Burnham’s semi-fascism. But Ms. Bone-Harris knows what it was like for a country to be dominated by a dictator that cannot be removed. Professor Lewis quotes her extensively.

Karen DeSouza of Red Thread and Mr. Mike McCormack of Guyana Human Rights Association know what it was like in Guyana when rigged elections kept Mr. Burnham and his party in power.

I know they were part of the emotional bandwagon for free and fair elections because I was with them in the struggle. How do you explain that both of these organisations were eerily silent for five months when Guyana was about to return to the 1970s?

Of course there has to be an answer. I have provided that answer maybe in hundreds, (yes hundreds) of columns since March 5, 2020. Here it is once again. I think class, colour and culture became a priority over love of country.