PRESIDENT Ali announced the symbol of “One Guyana” to raise our level of consciousness in support of nationhood rather than identification with race.
By some weird, psychic contortion, the motto was rejected by some sections of the society. Those sections went further and condemned the slogan on the Guyana passport. Amanza Walton-Desir came out swinging against the passport imprint.
The lady forgot that she served in Parliament and as a senior political official in the Government of a president (David Granger) that repainted a building legally recognized as a heritage site – State House. He used the colour of his party – green. When the State House was ordered repainted, I held my breath. You see, Granger is an irrational admirer of Forbes Burnham. Granger, in his former residence on D’Urban Backlands, has four foundations in Burnham’s name.
I held my breath because I knew President Burnham had an obsession with the colour purple. I was a graduate student at the University of Toronto when Burnham represented CARICOM at the North-South Dialogue in 1992 in Cancun, Mexico where his high-top boots were purple, his trousers were purple, and his Nehru shirt-jacket was purple. My graduate friends yelled out, “Fred, Fred look how your president is dressed.”
The nation was in relief when Burnham chose green over purple. The deceased lawyer, Vic Puran, who was a teenaged friend of mine, served in President’s Burnham office as an adviser. I once asked Vic why Burnham was so obsessed with the colour purple. He said Burnham took the colour from the Roman Empire, where it was the official colour. Guess what my favourite colour since my teenage days? Purple. It is indeed an irresistible hue. But had Granger picked purple for State House, it would have ended up as the ugliest building in the world.
To understand the weakness in the rejectionists’ argument, it is best to quote well-known journalist, Kiana Willburg, someone I knew from my days at Kaieteur News. In reading Ms. Willburg’s disagreement with the One Guyana stamp in the passport, then you see the confusion that arises where people do not understand and maybe do not want to accept that elected politicians become members of the country’s administrative organs, where they act as administrators, not politicians.
Here is Ms. Wilburg: “Whether One Guyana is a party slogan or not, it is the President’s mantra, by his admission… however, this author believes that a passport should not be seen as taking a side in domestic politics; it ought to be neutral and free from any political taglines, no matter how noble the cause… shouldn’t we use national symbols, songs, mottos, and the like in our sovereign documents?
What is wrong with that reasoning of Ms. Wilburg? Symbols, songs, mottos do not drop from the skies. They are the inventions of men and women who stamped them on the visage of the nation they are elected to govern. If you take that jurisdiction away from them then what power do they have to shape the things in their country?
The Coat of Arms on our passport cover came from the Burnham Government. The motto, “One People, One Nation, One Destiny” came from the Burnham Government. The national flag was designed during the Burnham time in office. The National Anthem was composed during Burnham’s reign. Now, nowhere on those images are the words, Peoples’ National Congress. All are governmental motifs born under the aegis of the Government of Guyana.
Unfortunately, Ms. Wilberg was not born when Burnham used a personality cult to stamp Guyana’s face with many personal preferences. He renamed the city of MacKenzie after his first name. Linden. A village up the East Coast bores his daughter’s name, Melanie Damishana. A South Georgetown district carries the appellation, Roxsann Burnham Gardens.
One of the crucial differences that must be impressed upon Ms. Wilburg is that many of the images Burnham imprinted on Guyana did not come from an elected president. Mr. Burnham won only one free and fair electoral competition, and that was in 1964. From that year until his death in 1985, Burnham’s presidency was not based on a legitimate voting process.
In contrast, Dr. Mohamed Irfaan was twice elected president of Guyana. There can be no logical interpretation that ONE GUYANA is a PPP thing. I quote Ms. Wilburg again: “A passport should not be seen as taking a side in domestic politics.” Where is the politics of a President using a motto to bring an ethnically diverse nation together? And how is the ONE GUYANA stamp in the passport different from the Coat of Arms in the passport’s pages? I believe when Ms. Wilburg wrote her words, in her Freudian mind, ONE GUYANA has to be political because it comes from a PPP politician. Strange thinking!
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.