ON this day in 1973, 43-year-old Bholanauth Parmanand and 17-year-old Jagan Ramessar were killed at Number 63 Village on the Corentyne in their protest against army contingents removing the ballot boxes to take them to Georgetown.
Last year on this date, I interviewed the children of Parmanand and it was a penetratingly sad episode of the Freddie Kissoon Show. I could not locate the siblings and parents of Ramessar. If anyone out there has any information about where I can contact them, then, please communicate with me – my cell is 614-5927 and my email is fredkissoon@yahoo.com.

The 1973 general election was another fraudulent poll after the 1968 election. The PNC claimed 70 per cent of the vote as against 26 per cent for the PPP, giving the PNC 37 seats and the PPP 14 seats. In an era where the majority Indian population stood at 52 per cent; Africans at 31 per cent; mixed at 11 per cent and Amerindians at five per cent. It was impossible in an age of ethnic voting for the PNC to have 70 per cent of the votes.
The rigged voting gave Forbes Burnham a two/thirds majority that was impossible at the time. The 1973 election was followed by a rigged referendum to change the constitution. I have lived through all these fraudulent avenues invented by Forbes Burnham and his PNC party and in each of them the memories would never go away.

For the 1973 poll, the one indelible spot on my memory card was the brutal beating of Kenneth Persaud who was the principal of a private high school in Kitty. His son at the time was married to Cheddi Jagan’s daughter, Nadira. I was with Kenneth and Boyo Ramsaroop with two other persons I cannot recall.

We were sticking pamphlets on the lantern post on Garnett Street and when we reached at the post by the Liberty cinema, a car drew up with vicious thugs who got out and began to swing lashes at us. We all ran but they caught up with Kenneth and beat him cruelly on both legs. He could not walk for days.

That incident in the fight for free and fair elections will always live with me. I will never forget the look of Kenneth Persaud when we went to visit him at his home. It was from that incident that Kenneth made his decision to leave Guyana. The image of a national election being rigged and the denial of a population of its right to vote and the brutalities endured by those who resisted the violence of the riggers is a trauma that one should never experience in their lives. No one should have to witness that tragedy.
For those in today’s Guyana who stood silently or supported the March 2020 conspiracy, it is almost impossible to forgive them when you had that experience of seeing an entire country go through the denial of the right to vote and the violence that visited those who fought for that right.

I interviewed the children of Parmanand and asked them to discuss their reaction when they heard that their father was killed. They were all very young at the time and their mother was left to care for five of them. Because of her age, Mrs. Parmanand could not travel to Guyana for the interview. Last year on looking back on this day in 1973, I wrote the following: “I always wonder why after the PPP came into power in 1992, it never sought to name something in Berbice after these two 1973 martyrs or even offer a Berbician a scholarship to a top university outside named after these two martyrs. There is still time to do so.”

What was contemptuous of the Guyanese people is that those who were silent about the March 2020 elections, had another opportunity to denounce the rigging when the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the elections was made public in April last year. The same people who chose not to denounce the March 2020 disaster chose to ignore the report.

In my reflection last year, I included a few lines of a song I like very much, “Winter in July” by Sarah Brightman for Parmanand and Ramessar. They are gone but we should never forget them. I beseech the government – please name something after them. Here are the words from Brightman’s song for two fallen heroes of Guyana. We must never accept the denial of the right to vote.

“We may not know the reason why
We’re born into this world
Where a man only lives to die
His story left untold”
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.