Constant trivialising of historical perceptions

Dec 02, 2012 Letters

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Dear Editor,
By training or career I am not a politician, and I have been told time and time again that most politicians are not interested in the ‘truth’ but rather in the consequences that lead to power or to powerful alliances. Thus I am forced to prospect and cross prospect to fulfill the need to be in a better position of understanding. Mike Persaud in his letter on Mon NOV. 12 “Burnham and Jagan bequeathed to us ethnic parties and ethnic voting” and the M. Maxwell group’s response on Wed. Nov.14 “The PNC grew out of Burnham’s quest for personal power” to my letter on Sunday Nov. 11 have respectively trivialized, and with M. Maxwell persist with the demonization of Burnham and the origin of the PNC.
I will explore in this final letter on this subject what I thought I had already done convincingly in my last letter. I begin October 1993; I, with a group of other writers, was invited to French Guyana by Mitaraka; with us was Martin Carter. The PPP had just gotten into power and the full wrath of attitudes that were clearly based on racism were felt by Afro Guyanese across Guyana. I have already made public my experiences at GNNL in a letter Kaieteur News July 11. 2011.

I Implored Martin Carter to give a brief outline on Dr. Jagan and the PPP during those early days which the poet had embraced and became disillusioned with, and departed from. Martin Carter related, alluding to Jagan as a man who embraced the radicalism of the socialist leaning post WW2 Creole society of British Guiana to legitimize himself as a socialist rather than the ethnic Folk leader he was, because he could not assume leadership over the Indo Guyanese professional and business class of the day.

The Creole professional class were the peers of the latter, thus Jagan and Janet proceeded to use the Martin Carter’s etc. as his image builders, his stepping stone to liberate [justifiably] his Indentured sugar estate population. While with Burnham, he stood before a colonial Afro and Africoid population that did not evolve from any philosophy or religious doctrines even before slavery that were based on racial hatred.

Also against Burnham was the fact that by the 1950’s colonial academic and religious racism had conditioned the Creole population to loathe themselves while still seeking emancipation of identity. Jagan stood favourably before a population en masse that was enveloped by the estates; isolated in the majority, from the existing colonial society in an enclave of their original religious bigotries; the Hindu Caste system. Jagan’s political gift in the 1950s was a peasant support base almost completely obedient to the idea of ‘we and them’.

To unmask Maxwell’s rabble rousing theme that “Barrington Braithwaite should stop distorting history. No matter how hard and how tirelessly he tries to distort history and undermine truth there’s nothing historic or great about the role of the PNC or PPP in Guyana’s history.” This is a subtle slant away from Maxwell’s previous letter. The other quote “The PNC was created for Burnham’s power egoism and opportunism. It was not created as an alternative. It became as communist as the

PPP wanted, look at Nationalism for a sound example.” By Maxwell’s own statement that “ Cheddi Jagan commanded Indian support. The PPP was assured of Indian support because of Cheddi Jagan. The PPP did not need to seek racial support.” Maxwell has contradicted himself. Then the PPP started on an ethnic platform which was inevitable in the context of British Guiana. This is indeed a queer fumbling in the reasoning as it attempts to convincingly define this subject. Let’s leave it to the records of the period and allow those who wish to explore it, do so objectively.
Daily Chronicle Thursday 20’1964. ‘Mann hits at hypocrisy of PPP’ Lawrence Mann; Parliamentary secretary. He alludes on the very front page nine points on departing from PPP-(7) has a desire for power so strong that it holds an unbending attitude against coalition based on equality. [81 Sacrifices economic policy to immediate political gain. (9) Thinks B.G is the PPP and the PPP is B.G.

This seems very current. Michael Swan related in his interesting book; ‘THE MARCHES OF EL DORADO’ “During the whole evening Mrs. Jagan lay in a hammock and contributed hardly a word to the discussion. Occasionally, when her husband’s eloquence was in spate, as in his remarks on the rise in the power of the East Indians, she would make a quick remark which stopped him short on the brink of indiscretion. Then she would lie back in her hammock, sphinge but always ready for the pounce. She has the reputation of being the organizer of the party, the theoretician who keeps well in the background, but to whom everything is referred. unquote:
Evening POST,Tuesday June 23, 1964- He tells the truth to Dr. Williams
[ Eric Williams] JAGAN ADMITS RESPONSIBLE FOR TERROR CAMPAIGN. Insert on front page ‘The Governor must detain Dr. and Mrs. Jagan and other PPP leaders still at large.’ GUYANA DEMOCRACY BETRAYED a political history 1948-1993 Jai Narine Singh- “Jagan had by now lost his main militant supporters, and had himself become a kind of dictator governing the affairs of Guyana as lord and master of it all. He organized protest demonstrations in several parts of the country in the course of which Afro Guyanese were killed and murdered.

This resulted in a chain reaction organized by the PNC and their supporters that led to mass killings. Unquote: The next quote defeats Maxwell’s assertion on Burnham’s splitting from the PPP for racist reasons. A HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM IN GUYANA 1900 to 1961; Ashton Chase: “ Confusion was made more confounded when Mr. Burnham[with the aid of Dr. Lachhmansingh] split the PPP in 1953. The Robertson commission had recommended a period of ‘marking time in this country.

After an agonizing analysis of the situation they came to the conclusion that so long as the leadership and policies of the PPP continued as they were , there was no way in which any real measure of self governance could be restored to the country.” unquote: This is a period in our history that needs to be understood in the context of the world they lived in. The swift nationalization was indeed ideological emotionalism.

Tyrone Ferguson’s book TO SURVIVE SENSIBLY OR TO COURT HEROIC DEATH : management of Guyana’s political economy 1965-85 defined the time of the  ideological PPP-PNC, and then President’s Burnham contemplation’s on policy change; ‘Burnham’s dilemma went beyond this evident internal wrangling in the party. He faced the firm hostility of opposition Political groups and the trade union movement against any move in the direction of ideological change and corresponding involvement with IMF and World Bank progranmmes. – the PPP argued that the institution’s “rescue’ operations include privatization, open-door free market economy, anti-working class, altering the terms of foreign trade to the benefit of the predator states..-Jagan stated [my highlight] “Carter would have allowed your vacillation and your meandering. But Reagan does not want that.

You have to line up with them . And so the danger is that while you talk of socialism even the little gains that have been made in that direction will be lost”
The PPP and the PNC evolved relevant to the era they lived in; as is the relevant evolution of APNU and the AFC in our time, with the surge of changes that must be made. Burnham’s Governance was not perfect, but his challenge was tremendous; that of decolonizing pathetic religious and cultural colonials and turning them into world conscious citizens and Guyanese, mistakes were made, little Caesars sprang up, innocent people were hurt. But for M. Maxwell to declare “The PNC is a failed and incompetent political organization” Kaieteur News July 26, 2012. Is to deny the NIS, the Demerara Harbour Bridge, The initiative of ‘ IWOKRAMA’ that Jagdeo ungraciously adopted.

The Economic Recovery Programme, and the policy items I mentioned in my letter kaieteur News, Nov, 11, 2012 Is to plunge one’s own irrational hatreds into the public domain and expect to be applauded for it. But we must examine today where the politics has evolved and where the dinosaurs are, for we are still experiencing the urges of ‘natural selection’ to survive in the course of Nations. I will conclude by stating this experience. I provided a Media service to a prominent Indo-Guyanese business family.

The patriarch of this family was a onetime Minister in the PPP; in a lighter moment he one afternoon  explained to me that after the 1964 elections that brought the coalition OF and PNC to Governance, there was a rush to find Burnham who had dropped off the radar of his colleagues; while all the while he was at the home of this family sound asleep. If history is distorted by me, then the phantom M. Maxwell must declare the biographers of that period, orally and in print guilty of the same.
Barrington Braithwaite

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