The PNC: A revisionist note

Jun 12, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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I make four points before I begin this essay. I make these four conclusions unapologetically and will not apologize ever until I believe otherwise.First, Forbes Burnham deserves the Oliver Tambo Award. No one should dispute that.
Secondly, the evidence is there and can be obtained that Mr. Burnham was involved in the assassination of Walter Rodney. Thirdly, Mr. Burnham’s reign was crudely authoritarian. No decent researcher could dispute that. Fourthly, Guyanese history has been unkind and unfair to Burnham. He was Guyana’s most nationalist and patriotic head of government.
There is no point lamenting the roads PNC did not take after 1968 when Mr. Burnham became the maximum leader. Three chasms sucked up the credibility of Burnham, one of which he had no control over.
One – He should have asked for outside assistance to mediate the conflict between him – a post-war anti-colonial fighter – and a post-Independence radical in the form of Walter Rodney. Burnham should have turned to Africa or civil rights leaders in the US.
Two- Burnham knew he had an opposition party, in the PPP, that was immensely strong, had resources and half of Guyana supported it. Brutal realpolitik ought to have instructed Burnham that he could not have afforded to play into the hands of Dr. Jagan.
Burnham’s politics from 1968 until his death was incomprehensibly incompetent. He literally created an enemy that he, Burnham, knew was bent on removing him. Whatever leverage Dr. Jagan got from Guyana and the world, it came compliments of the President of Guyana, Forbes Burnham.
Three – I left this for the last because it explains number one and two. Mr. Burnham was a brilliant nationalist, a leader who cared for the poorer classes, a leader with a conscious understanding that colour and class were post-Independent Guyana’s enemies that must be confronted and he confronted them.
But Mr. Burnham, had he lived longer, would have become a despised tyrant, because he was essentially driven by the lust for power.
Burnham believed that he was essentially a great man and that he wanted no limitation on power, thus the frightening 1980 Constitution.
In all fairness to him, had he lived longer, he would have continued his developmental thrust which was so admirable, frowned upon  that part of Guyana that had a colonial complex with white skin, and made sure the poorer classes remained satisfied.
In his years of power (1964 or maybe for some including me, 1968 to 1985), Mr. Burnham did some great things which he has not been given credit for. But can you blame his racial and political opponents for demonizing him. They see that as their role.
It was for the PNC and their constituencies to confront the decades of vilification by writing on the achievements of Burnham, the presidency of Desmond Hoyte, and the accomplishments of the PNC. It was for African scholars to do their iconoclastic research on Cheddi Jagan and show how immensely flawed he and his party were from 1956 onwards.
You can count one book only – Tyrone Ferguson’s “To Survive Sensibly or to Court Heroic Death: Management of Guyana’s Political Economy, 1965 -1985″– that does a plausibly good job on Burnham. I constantly ask Hamilton Green why he hasn’t written another book as yet.
During the 2011 election campaign, I asked Dr. Van-West Charles the same question. No PNC stalwart has written a book or his/her memoirs.
Since they fell from power twenty one years ago, the PNC has done nothing to juxtapose their rule with the madness that characterized the reign of the Jagdeo presidency. The PNC has done nothing to educate Guyanese that their administration was far superior to Bharrat Jagdeo’s. And indeed it was.
There were more moral obligations to Guyana demonstrated by the PNC Government from 1968 to 1992 than in the twelve years of Mr. Jagdeo’s tenure. Mr. Burnham would have arrested the criminals that have been welcomed in the corridors of power and are still there.
Perhaps, more importantly, the PNC has let down its constituencies and the Guyanese people by a crazy, macabre resignation of their fate since they lost power in 1992.
The PNC must be the world’s only opposition party that does not want to be in office. Aligned with this disposition is the fact that the PNC tolerates the most humiliating treatment of its constituencies by the Government that Dr. Jagan and the PPP never tolerated and never would have tolerated without a fight.
Finally, the PNC shows signs of self-destruction when you think that there is no Aubrey Norton, Richard Van-West Charles, Vincent Alexander, James Mc Allister, etc. Now Faith Harding has left and may join the PPP.

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