Mr. Singh is deliberately silent on some salient facts of history

Aug 30, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Mr. Sasenarine Singh in his letter, “Why blame the AFC for reading the grassroots point of view and strategizing accordingly?” in Kaieteur News August 25, 2010 sets out to analyse aspects of Guyana’s history using the binary good/bad which he conveniently skews to make bad Mr. Forbes Burnham and the PNC.
Taking a cue from his analysis that the “facts are Burnham never believed in any coalition in any form unless it served his and only his exclusive purposes”, no explanation was given why the PPP under Dr. Cheddi Jagan after encouraging coalition with the WPA and GUARD who were the real challengers to Mr. Burnham and the PNC, Dr. Jagan abandoned the groups on the eve of 1992 elections saying the PPP will go alone, and co-opted some people they called the CIVIC.
Neither was there the analysis why after the WPA gave up its regional seat to give the PPP a working majority in 1992 Dr. Jagan shunned the party and later derided Professor Clive Thomas’ economic expertise at a public meeting at Kitty Market.
According to Mr. Singh it was said Mr. Burnham was a racist but he failed to say that the same was said of Dr. Jagan. Where he got the information that it was Mr. Burnham who incited racial strife to steal power from Dr. Jagan in 1964 is anyone’s guess.
He is advised to read Mr. Eusi Kwayana’s “Next Witness” written in 1961 which may provide a clearer understanding of this racial strife-making period.
Convinced in his correctness he affirms that, “I am firm in my conviction that organisations like the WPA, with surgical precision will be chewed up and spat out by the PNC as they outlive their usefulness”, but by the same extrapolation he failed to analyse why the PPP, “chewed up and spat out” the WPA after 1992 when it thought the WPA had outlived its useful and why the AFC did the same to Ms. Gaumattie Singh after the 2006 elections.
References are made of quotes to support arguments that Mr. Burnham was bad. The U.S and British did not only say unkind things about Mr. Burnham, they also did of Dr. Jagan. In a letter dated August 18, 1961, Foreign Secretary Home Alex writing to Secretary of State Rusk said Dr. Jagan is a “confused thinker and his mind is clogged with ill-digested dogma derived from Marxist literature.”
When intellect and lucidity are seen as valid qualities of good leaders the statement made about Dr. Jagan is demeaning. When Mr. Burnham took over government from Dr. Jagan in December 1964 it was the British Government who said the colony’s finances were in a mess. It was the Crown that said Dr. Jagan made the colony “insolvent,” not Mr. Burnham, or one of the locals.
Mr. Singh is deliberately silent on some salient facts of that part of history. The era he writes about to justify the demonization of  Mr. Burnham and the PNC Guyana was still a colony, there was a cold war and colonized nations all over the world were subject to this sort of control and intervention. If there was any victim at all, Guyana was. Even Mr. Burnham could not have independently charted his course or the country’s course.
While some think Mr. Burnham is a villain others think he was a smart politician, because he was mindful of the presence of history and had the political acumen to recognise the end game for Guyana was political independence and it was the British and U.S. who would ultimately decide it and a major part in influencing that decision would have been the actions of the local politicians. Somehow this political shrewdness that would be admired elsewhere is condemned in Guyana and I guess it is only so because it was Mr. Burnham and not Dr. Jagan.
Clearly Mr. Singh seems most comfortable dwelling in a past none can undo or definitively judge in the absence of examining all the prevailing dynamics occurring at the time. It is a past some seem most comfortable dwelling in as they seek to use the voters to settle old scores and allow President Jagdeo and his ministers to get away with running havoc over the nation.
Those who are locked in the 1950s-1960s, when Guyana was a colony and subjected to the whims of the colonizers, the past is the past and it cannot be undone, only studied. This is 2010 and Guyana is an independent nation under the leadership of President Jagdeo and something can be done to undo the wrongs he is doing to this country.
Seemingly the AFC’s letter writers do not have that focus. Its focus is to punish the PNC, voters and Guyana for some wrong they think Mr. Burnham and the PNC have done to Dr. Jagan and the PPP.
Those who want to move forward should do so and leave Mr. Sasenarine Singh and company in the past, trying to settle scores for two men, who understood the history of their time, are now dead, and were reportedly friends.
Vincent Ellis

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