What have Forbes Burnham and Cheddi Jagan done to be considered political heroes?

Feb 04, 2013 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Humans seem to have a deep psychological need for heroes, so every country has them. But because the elevation of deeds to the level of heroic acts often depends on by, to, and for whom deeds are done, it is not surprising that many so-called heroes are rarely unanimously approved or universally accepted. So it is, has been, and will forever be.
And though heroes are not accepted by everyone and are not equal in status, I have observed that sports heroes are the most likely to enjoy national acclaim across racial and ideological divides within any country. So in Guyana, it would probably be easier to get two-thirds of our people or parliament to acclaim and vote Rohan Kanhai and/or Clive Lloyd as national sports heroes than it would be to get them to designate Forbes Burham and/or Cheddi Jagan as political heroes. But such is the nature of our politics, and of human nature, too: We want to select our political heroes, as well as those of our friends and enemies!
But what have Forbes Burnham and Cheddi Jagan done to be considered political heroes? What wrongs did they right? How many lives did they save? How many Guyanese regardless of race, religion, or creed looked forward to their appearances and speeches, hoping that they’d live forever? And what joys and glory did they bring to our nation? How much deprivation did they suffer? These identical questions or variants of them have been asked before, but they have always been met with defensive answers that malign and impugn the questioners. For to the supporters of these men, such questions are merely a transparent attempt to turn their demigods into demagogues. But these questions have to and must always be asked until we are able to engage in dispassionate discourses about our nation’s political history.
Forbes Burnham and Cheddi Jagan came of political age in a Guyana that was under British rule. They both attended the elite Queen’s College, then an exclusive boys’ school; and were both educated in the West— Burnham in London on a British government scholarship for being the top student in our country, and Jagan through his own resources in the United States. Mr. Burnham left for his delayed studies in London in 1945 and came back as a 26-year-old lawyer in 1949 while Mr. Jagan left for his studies in the US in 1936 and came back as a 25-year-old dentist in 1943. They in 1950 collaborated in the formation of the original People’s Progressive Party, from which the PNC emerged in 1958 following a split from the PPP in 1955. That split, though attributed to as many reasons as there are agenda-driven insiders willing to talk about it, ultimately resulted from the inability of two self-absorbed charismatics to co-exist in the same party. But Burnham and Jagan were united in their demand and determination that the British must end their rule in Guyana. The British acceded by allowing self-rule in 1953 and Independence in 1966. But using our experiences with both PPP and PNC governments as guides, I have been thinking about what grievances Burnham and Jagan had against the British. The American call to oust the British was clear and singular: no taxation without representation. And they remedied that situation by running the British out of town and establishing a Republic whose democracy and economy have become the envy and refuge of the world, and the scourge of the enemies of freedom and personal liberty.
But what situation(s) did Mr. Burnham and Mr. Jagan seek to remedy and actually remedied after the British acceded to their demands? And what legacies of their rule have they left our nation and the world? Many Guyanese do not know what life was like under British rule because they were either too young or were born after 1966. So a synopsis of life under the British is necessary. Policemen walked the streets with batons (no, not the type used in track and field relays) and extra-judicial killings were as rare as a visit by the Queen; racial and religious discrimination were subtle but rampant against Indo- and Afro-Guyanese in sports and employment; secondary and vocational schools did not exist outside of Georgetown, particularly because less years of education meant that necessary labor would be more readily available to the sugar estates; most people lived in tenement yards in Georgetown and in shacks (except for the few sugar workers who were able to buy cheap house lots from Bookers (now Guysuco) on or off sugar estates in the countryside, which was an idyllic place with few serious crimes against persons or property; Georgetown, as it is now, was the place where one was most likely to be the victim of a crime, but it was also among the cleanest cities in the world; and the colonists, eager to replicate life in Britain to the greatest extent possible and in keeping with their free enterprise competitive spirit, allowed various kinds of business enterprises and multiple newspapers and radio stations, which always censored the news to ensure that British rule was not threatened by unwelcomed ideologies or by the restive ambitions of the educated local elite.
So it was in this environment that Forbes Burnham and Cheddi Jagan made their entry into the struggle to “free” Guyana from British rule and its concomitant adverse effects.
We can judge for ourselves to what extent our lives and nation have changed from the circumstances the British left when they first allowed internal rule in 1953 and Independence in 1966. In what ways have Mr. Burnham and Mr. Jagan improved our society and relationships among our people? What good things have these men done that no other leader could have done or inspired our people to do? What became of the multiple radio stations and newspapers that Guyanese were allowed to access during colonial rule? And have more Guyanese been killed under PPP or PNC inspired and supported violence than were killed under British rule? What has become of the rule of law? And now that the fruits of our labor are not being sent to the treasury of a mother country, are they being enjoyed by us and our mothers? Or are they being deposited in the mother of all treasuries, the bank accounts of our leaders and their cohorts?
I’m not naïve about the nature and effects of colonial rule and do not want a return of any foreign power to administer the affairs of our country. But given where we are today as a nation, I have every right to wonder if the grievances of Mr. Burnham or Mr. Jagan extended beyond their individual wish to be the first among the local educated elite to sate their restive desire to experience the exercise of power over our people and our treasury.
Or could it be that I should look no further than the anti-colonial sentiments that had enveloped the minds of the educated elite in other colonized territories? Whatever their reasons for wanting the British out of Guyana, the plain truth is that in any other country in any other time, these two would have been at the very minimum charged and placed on trial if a properly constituted commission had conducted an objective inquiry into their activities and actions against our people and country.
This is not to say that I am attempting to deny supporters of these men the right to call them heroes. They are free to have and sing about their heroes . But I wish the rest of us would be spared the pressure to join in the chorus. We prefer to focus on our struggle to bring our country back from the frightening brink to which it has been pushed by Mr. Burnham and Mr. Jagan.
So I want to acknowledge and recommend the struggles of the men and women who have sensed that our nation has had a greater need to be liberated from our own leaders than it had to be liberated from the British. And they have been fighting for the liberty of our nation, without regard to race or party.
These people are Walter Rodney, Karen de Souza, Andaiye, Clive Thomas, Tacuma Ogunseye, Lincoln Lewis, David Hinds, Mark Benschop, Nigel Hughes, Moses Nagamootoo, Khemraj Ramjattan, Freddie Kissoon, Raphael Trotman, newspaper owners such as Glen Lall and David de Caires, and others whose names I can’t recall or don’t know.
They have suffered personal and business deprivations such as loss of life, limb, livelihood, freedom, and business income as a result of self-serving but unpatriotic reactions by the PPP and PNC. These are the people that should be hailed as the true political heroes of our country because they want to make our country a better place than they found it. And they seem to refuse to allow party politics or the personal charisma of any leader to get in their way.
Though degree of deprivations ought not to be the sole measure by which heroes are determined, it is nevertheless an important one. But I consider it a crying shame and an insult to make comparisons between the cruel deprivations suffered by the aforementioned persons  and the benign deprivations suffered by Mr. Burnham or Mr. Jagan during their struggle to “liberate” Guyana from British rule.
How much deprivation did Mr. Burnham or Dr. Jagan suffer in getting enraptured supporters to join marches and picket lines or in writing or delivering speeches that would now read and sound like bombast to those who think for more than a second? And what deprivation was there in Dr. Jagan’s retributive 28-year loss of power for his more than 50-year heartless support of oppression and dictatorship in communist countries? Or in his being being jailed for a few days and having his movement restricted to Georgetown for about 3 years for his own safety?
Our country has also suffered far greater deprivations because Dr. Jagan and Mr. Burnham have ruled it. Yes, the bad they have done to it far outweighs the good they did for it. So I urge my heroes to stay the course because our nation needs people like them much more than it ever needed the unreformed PPP or PNC or the two political heroes designated by them.
Lionel Lowe

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