THE online news outlet run by the TUC and the PNC, named Village Voice (PNC villages voted for WIN, not the PNC), has shouted out from the rooftop that President Ali is copying from President Forbes Burnham in the announcement of a glass factory at Wales, West Bank Demerara.
There are many visionary projects that Forbes Burnham implemented that the Ali presidency and other post-colonial countries should adopt. What these countries should do is move billions of miles away from the political canopy under which projects of self-sufficiency were conceived and developed by Burnham.
The researcher is simply dishonest to say that Burnham didn’t have vision. A plateau of visionary, nationalist projects that Burnham unleashed on Guyana were theoretically sound, but the political foundations and Burnham’s power intoxication killed them.
These pathways, which were post-colonial embarkations away from the Western model of development, had phenomenal potential for transforming the economic future of the former colonies, but Burnham’s political style of governance prevented national embrace of these new directions. The Village Voice gave a number of reasons why the glass factory failed, but the role of Burnham’s dictatorial governance is omitted.
We will take one example of a visionary model that was relevant to post-colonial Guyana because of Guyana’s largeness, but failed and discuss one example of a political policy that generated dislike for Burnham from the population and had deadly consequences for all of Burnham’s visionary horizons except the NIS, Linden Highway and the Harbour Bridge.
I know of Burnham’s achievements and ignominious failures because I lived under the 20-year-old rule of Burnham, opposed his totalitarian instincts and suffered oppression for my activism. The National Service institution is of theoretical soundness and was relevant to Guyana. But one day, students arrived on the campus to find their names on the walls of the buildings requiring them to do National Service. This columnist was one.
It was compulsory for UG students, and the results were disastrous. Students were mistreated, had their religion and cultures insulted, and female students were coerced into having sex. The society came to hate National Service because of how Burnham implemented it.
The idea of National Service involving the exploration of Guyana’s never-ending interior is one that is still relevant today. But it can only be successful if it is packaged with the consent and co-operation of its adherents. What Burnham should have done was to shape the UG curriculum to involve classes with students and professors in the interior, where the interaction with the environment would have been a learning experience.
Instead, Burnham forced students to go to the interior, where they engaged not in knowing the environment but in subordinating themselves to military exercises by military men and women who were uncouth and did not know the meaning of respect for people. National Service was one of the contributory factors in Guyana’s hatred for Burnham.
Think of what will happen in Guyana in 2026 if President Ali invents an interior project for Golden Grove youths, and the mother of one of the girls claims an official molested her. The high voltage confrontation from the opposition parties, the Guyana Human Rights Association, Transparency International, Guyana Chapter, Red Thread, Stabroek News, the TUC and the other anti-government bandwagons would begin immediately.
Now, for the political policy that made Burnham a figure of hate. Forbes Burnham’s People’s National Congress in 1976 was made a paramount national institution of higher national value than state institutions. This came at a time when Burnham rigged national elections in which the more popular opposition party, the PPP, would have won. The ruling unelected party then became coterminous with Guyana itself.
Such a totalitarian government will inevitably receive intense hatred from the population, with the consequence being that anything the leader does, no matter how moral, humanitarian, innovative and transformational, will be rejected. This is why the visionary policies of Burnham collapsed. Every economic innovation that Burnham pursued was rejected.
People criticised the NIS, hydro-power projects, agricultural schemes, the Harbour Bridge, the Mortgage Finance Bank, the Guyana Cooperative Bank, the Cultural Centre, the glass factory, the banning of certain foreign foods, among other things, even though as theoretical models, those things were relevant in post-colonial countries simply because a man they hated was the person behind them and the reason for disliking him was logical.
People associated these new horizons with a man they did not trust, so they questioned everything he did. For them, if Burnham brings it in, then something is wrong with it. I lived through those days, and I can tell Guyana’s young generation that Burnham was so reviled that if he invented a fruit juice that cured blindness, Guyanese would have been suspicious and would have rejected it. Such was the dislike for Burnham.
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.