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Burnham left a legacy; Jagdeo has none

Dec 30, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The November 30 editorial of this newspaper advised the Ramotar presidency to avoid ongoing connection with Mr. Jagdeo. The election results showed that Mr. Jagdeo was rejected at the polls. The PPP can twist and turn all the facts it wants, it didn’t get a parliamentary majority because of Mr. Jagdeo.
If Bharrat Jagdeo had been a human being who had a personality different to what he is made up of, the PPP would have won the elections. Mr. Jagdeo was simply a President that overdid it and he turned people off. Why?
Bharrat Jagdeo loved power and became fascinated with the possession of absolute authority. No doubt he saw how Burnham used power and he emulated Burnham. That was his undoing. That was a tragic mistake. I lived under Mr. Burnham and studied his style and character as an academic. I lived under Jagdeo and did the same. It is my conclusion that Mr. Jagdeo was incapable of ever entering the league of Mr. Burnham. The PNC leader and former President was a tower of political erudition, a thinking politician and an extremely smart man who studied his country in a profound way.
Sad to say, Mr. Jagdeo lacked the intellectual fibre that made Burnham’s hold on power strong and tight. It is not only a requirement that a leader study Guyana’s political culture and its economics but he/she must have a deep insight into the evolution of Guyana’s sociology and its contemporary contours. Burnham mastered this. Jagdeo knew nothing about it.
Forbes Burnham came from an African middle class family. He was familiar with the nature of that stratum. But his politics and his trade unionism enabled him to understand working class people, their world and their culture. His legal background enhanced his intellectual prowess. Mr. Forbes Burnham came from a generation of African Guyanese who were exceedingly nationalistic. This instinct shaped his politics. Sadly and tragically for Guyana, Mr. Jagdeo lacked any of these backgrounds.
It took decades in politics before Forbes Burnham, Desmond Hoyte, Cheddi Jagan and Janet Jagan became head of government. Mr. Jagdeo was catapulted into the presidency without even two years of political experience. The claim that Mr. Jagdeo was active in youth politics in the PPP is not true. Mr. Jagdeo had no noticeable presence in PPP politics before he became President. Dr. Luncheon admitted in cross examination in the President’s libel case against me that he first heard about Mr. Jagdeo in 1992 after the PPP came to government.
Fascinated with absolute power and wanting to emulate Mr. Burnham, Mr. Jagdeo lacked the astuteness of Burnham thus he never enjoyed the popularity that came Burnham’s way. Here now is a graphic example of Burnham outsmarting Jagdeo. Burnham invented the 1980 Constitution that bestowed absolute on him but he never used those monarchial clauses; Mr. Jagdeo did. This is a little obscure fact that has not been given prominent media coverage.
Mr. Jagdeo made more use of the 1980 Constitution than its own creator, Forbes Burnham.
It is literally impossible to write two or three or four columns highlighting the essential differences between Forbes Burnham and Bharrat Jagdeo. It will take much more than such numbers. What I will do is to pen the analysis and stretch it over a period of time. The one area that must figure in the first installment is the role of nationalism.
Coming from the African middle class with the cultural perception of that class that State institutions are sacred, Mr. Burnham and his fellow PNC leaders would not have divested State property, including massive land titles to a cabal of billionaires.
No PNC leader would ever have done that. In an address to an academic conference at UG last week, I made the point that in the lands allocated to Mrs. Burnham during the reign of her husband, the legal transfer never occurred. President Burnham was satisfied with lease conditions. Obviously, his friends’ land-grabbing was one of the social morbidities that the Guyanese people resented about Mr. Jagdeo.
Mr. Jagdeo was too barefaced in this particular policy. State lands were being sold for a song; and to whom? All the friends of Mr. Jagdeo. I will continue the comparative examination but in closing, the presidency of Donald Ramotar should take heed from what the KN editorial advised on Wednesday –  stay clear of Mr. Jagdeo. Mr. Jagdeo’s presidency marked perhaps the lowest moral level in the history of the British West Indies. It would be best for the young generation to forget about this man.

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