Latest update April 7th, 2026 12:30 AM
The PNC and PPP dictatorship: The difference
May 14, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I was watching IPL cricket last Sunday (I back the teams that have West Indian players and want the team with the most West Indian players to win the trophy) when I got a telephone call from a prominent trade unionist. He advised me to go to the comments section of the Stabroek News.
I couldn’t because I do not read the online edition of the Stabroek News. I buy the printed version and also, you have to subscribe to the online edition. I suggested he read out for me the thing he found interesting. He said that a contributor knocked me for comparing the PPP Government with the PNC in President Burnham’s days, because it was Burnham who denied me a job in Guyana after I graduated from UG.
It was from that telephone conversation that I got the idea to write this column. I have done literally dozens and dozens of columns on the comparison between the Burnham Government and the PPP regime since Mr. Jagdeo became President. Also, as the years creep on, materials come to light that reveal positive things about Burnham and negative things about Cheddi Jagan that those interested in Guyana never knew about.
As the years wear on, people are writing about Cheddi Jagan, and things about Mrs. Jagan, Bharrat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar are coming out. The myths about the bad monster that Burnham was and the great angel Jagan was are exploding like fireworks. Read Clem Seecharran’s “Sweetening Bitter Sugar” and you will see egregious aspects of Jagan’s politics that we would never have known if those materials were not made available.
Yes, Burnham refused to have me employed by the state and the private sector would not have touched me out of fear of Burnham. One bank manager told me that he was afraid to offer me employment. And Basil Hinds, at the US Information Service, said he was sympathetic but preferred not to ruffle Burnham (amazing how some people cannot see what an authoritarian leader Burnham was).
But why is the Burnham Government worse than the PPP regime because Burnham victimized me?
It means then that as an academic, I throw away my objective analytical mind and use a personal yardstick to assess people, places and events. So, if France stopped my cousin at the airport but Saudi Arabia welcomes him with open arms, is Saudi Arabia more democratic than France? The less said about such a methodology the better.
Let’s continue with the comparison. The difference between the Burnham administration and the Jagdeo government that stretches into the Ramotar presidency lies in the essential being of the apparatchik in both regimes. The personnel in the PNC Government, including Burnham himself, were people with a certain decorum, standard of etiquette, nationalist sentiments, political skills, leadership qualities, basic principles and sensitivity to the prevailing situation.
From Jagdeo right up to Ramotar, none of these qualities are present. I have had personal experiences with Jagdeo and Ramotar that leave me with no doubt that Burnham was more eligible to be head of Guyana.
If you examine the record of the PPP since 1999, every transgression of the Burnham Government has been matched by the PPP, including tainted elections, and in each instance, the PPP was more sordid in its conspiratorial methods. The fool who wrote that Burnham refused to employ me forgot that my UG contract had a mere five more months to go in 2012 before it was terminated.
Some people hold on to the lack of conclusive proof of Burnham’s involvement in Walter Rodney’s death. They point to the device he had as proof of a bad intention. There is no mistake as to how Ronald Waddell met his death. Men with AK-47s shot him in front of his home. Someone sent them.
The Burnham Government harassed Moses Bhagwan’s wife at her state job at GPC. The identical thing happened to my wife in 2011 at GO-Invest. State media was misused in the PNC days. It is a footcloth under the PPP regime. But here is where the comparison breaks down. Burnham would never humiliate his wife as publicly as Jagdeo did.
I end with a horror story that I have never told to my lawyer Nigel Hughes in the libel trial. In 1995, I was in the Castellani House sauna with Malcolm Harripaul when an apparatchik high in the Ministry of Finance came with his friends.
He said to me in front of Harripaul, “Ya’ll at UG mekking them Bl… lecturers f… all them Indian girls….” Harripaul is a living witness. None of the PNC apparatchiks from Burnham right down would have done that.
Discover more from Kaieteur News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.