FORBES Burnham was born three days before the date of Mashramani. I can recall many Guyanese, including Ravi Dev, expressing the opinion that Burnham put the event on this day so it would be close to his birthday.
No one will ever know if that was Burnham’s intention because Burnham didn’t write about his life. I suspect the reason he didn’t was because he was still a very young president (he died at 62), who felt he had many years of power left in him. He certainly knew power was guaranteed because he tenaciously embraced the contents of Machiavelli’s political text, “The Prince.” Machiavelli felt that power once acquired should be jealously protected at all cost.
Once in power, Burnham did not allow a legally conducted national election. He did authorise his underlings to open discussions with the PPP for a joint slate for the 1985 national election. The details of those covenants are captured in the book by Halim Majeed (Guyana’s current envoy to Cuba) titled, “Forbes Burnham: National Reconciliation and National Unity, 1984 –1985.”
There is no outline in Majeed’s book that if there was a unified slate for future elections how the presidency would have been shaped. Interestingly, Mrs Janet Jagan stayed clear of the unity covenants because she didn’t trust Burnham. Clement Rohee was part of the unity confabulations but in his autobiography, he was extremely disappointing in not providing notes on the unity meetings, so one does not know what the presidential power-sharing would have been like when the coalition became a success. I think Burnham would have been forced to accept presidential power-sharing with Jagan by the USSR and Castro.
Since his birth anniversary last Friday, there have been an outpouring of eulogies, but the presentations have followed the worn-out tracks over the past decades and end up boring the reader. The PNC aligned online newspaper, Village Voice, carried a number of articles praising Burnham. One of two things happened: either the editor showed the writers each other’s analysis and they decided to repeat what each other wrote.
Or alternatively, there was nothing new to write, so they each ended up churning out the same old sermon – harbour bridge, Canje bridge, NIS, MMA scheme, refrigeration company, National Flour Mill and Sanata Textile Mill and clay brick factory. In all the eulogies of Burnham since his 1985 death, it is the same description every year. In 2027, and years to follow, on the observation of the birth anniversary, it will be the same stuck record.
Mark Benschop and former Georgetown mayor, Ubraj Narine, became comical in their praise of Burnham this year. Narine wrote: “At a critical moment in our history, he championed political stability, territorial integrity, and national unity.” This is both hilarious and moronic.
Narine wasn’t born when Burnham’s style of governance created national chaos, weakened national unity and caused the Venezuelans to invoke its claim on Guyana. By the time Walter Rodney arrived on the political scene in 1974, Burnham’s popularity was so low that Rodney became an overnight sensation. Narine, if he is going to remain in politics, needs to read. There is no replacement in politics for voracious reading. The Commission of Inquiry into Rodney’s assassination cited Burnham’s role in the affair.
Like Narine, Benschop doesn’t read. In offering his admiration on Burnham’s birth anniversary, the first achievement that came out of Burnham’s mouth was National Service. Benschop cited an accomplishment of Burnham that became Burnham’s nemesis. Compulsory National Service made Burnham a despicable despot in the eyes of the Guyanese people, and he was demonised when stories of mistreatment of female UG students became known.
The rule of Forbes Burnham from 1968 to his death in 1985 was the third most terrible period in Guyanese history after slavery, then colonialism. You don’t know if to treat as comical, asinine or dangerous the denigrations of the present PPP government and the Ali presidency by people who shower emotional praise on Burnham.
You can’t help imagining what will happen in Guyana if President Ali does one percent of the totalitarian, Machiavellian things that Burnham did to this country.
President Ali announced the motto of “One Guyana” and some have instantly rejected it. Burnham composed a national document named the Declaration of Sophia, which stipulated that the People’s National Congress as the party in power will have paramountcy over all state institutions. In contemporary Guyanese history,
it is referred to as “paramountcy of the party.” Next year the pantomime will continue. But when you admire a leader, I suppose you write nice things about him/her even if the paragraphs smell worse than dead meat.
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.
