Burnham remembered

Feb 23, 2013 Editorial

The 90th birth anniversary of former President Forbes Burnham passed almost unnoticed on February 20, last. Burnham died on August 6, 1985. He was 62. He was preparing for the Biennial Congress of the party he founded—the People’s National Congress—when he opted to undergo what was supposed to be a minor surgical intervention for plaque in his throat. He never left the hospital.
Burnham is almost all but forgotten in Guyana because the current political directorate once projected him as a dictator who destroyed the country with policies that some found questionable. But that apart, Guyana was one of the founders of independent Guyana. He returned from law school and with Dr Cheddi Jagan , founded the People’s Progressive Party that was to lead the country to its first ever control of the parliament.
Together, these two great men mobilized the country against the colonial masters. They took Guyana to its first elections under Universal Adult Suffrage and literally swept the polls. This happened even as the so-called free world was battling what it saw as the communist bogey. The British masters did not like what they saw emerging and suspended the constitution.
The history of Guyana is still being written and in some pages Burnham would be accused of sparking the racial division that still exists in the country. He broke from the PPP and formed his own branch of the PPP that was later to become the People’s National Congress. Up came the 1957 elections and Dr Jagan’s party won.
And the clash between the two parties began only to escalate into naked violence in the early 1960s. For four years Guyana existed under conditions akin to a civil war. There are those who would say that Burnham sided with the colonial masters to wrest power from Jagan whom it was felt would always win an election in Guyana once there was the race vote.
Burnham took Guyana to independence following a coalition with the then United Force and remained at the helm of the country until his death in 1985. In that period the nation saw the attainment of its independence, the modernization of the infrastructure—a road linking the city to Linden, a new airport terminal building, a modern hotel (Pegasus), the Corentyne road link, the West Demerara Road link, the Demerara Harbour Bridge and a series of schools that would allow for the development of technical education.
Perhaps Burnham was way ahead of his time. He tried to drag Guyana long with his vision and incurred the resentment of many. He had already expanded the city to unbelievable limits; he initiated Carifesta and in the process began the housing development of southern Georgetown.
Burnham way back then recognized that Guyana could not depend on fossil fuel and so he pursued the establishment of a hydroelectric facility. That endeavour was not supported by Venezuela which to this day continues to lay claim to Essequibo. In the end the financial support was not forthcoming and the project collapsed.
Today, forty years later Guyana is once more pursuing the establishment of a hydroelectric facility in the Essequibo.
For all that he tried he could not escape allegations of corruption. There was a report that he was the fifth richest man in the world, a claim that could not be substantiated. Suffice it to say that Burnham could not have been accused of condoning corruption.
He may have been many things but he respected the law, being a lawyer himself and he never intervened in any decision be it against the government or otherwise. He was keen on education and caused the establishment of what was intended to be a school of excellence. He did not live to see President’s College open its door but what he left was an institution that produced rounded persons, all of whom have done exceedingly well as adults. He also pursued a food self sufficiency policy and earned even more criticisms.
There was the Guyana National Service that was another institution that came in for criticism from the political opposition but which provided skills training for many young people.
Many of what he created have been dismantled but decades later we see the country reverting to many of the things that Burnham started. His was a life of vilification and only history will judge him.

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