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Two women, two men and the recording of history

Mar 01, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Make no mistake; the outpouring of emotions for and against President Forbes Burnham will continue long after the present generation passes on. That is how life treats exceptional leaders whether they were good or bad.  Last week, there were three expressions on Forbes Burnham. Last Sunday, this newspaper published an editorial on him that was an intense panegyric that did not carry any negative sentiments or condemnatory observations. A panegyric is what it is – full praise and deep appreciation.
In another newspaper, the Stabroek News, the same Sunday there was an interview with the daughter of Frank Noel, one of the well known names from the seventies when Mr. Burnham was president. Mr. Frank Noel was one of the most visible and powerfully placed bureaucrats in the government at the time.
Cheryl Noel was very caustic in her position on Burnham. The next day, a Guyanese lady in her mid-eighties who currently lives in England, Geralda Dennison, published a letter in this newspaper that was favourable to Burnham. In yesterday’s issue of Kaieteur News, a friend of mine from, Leyland Roopnarine from the diaspora took a condemnatory position on Burnham as a reaction to the Kaieteur News editorial.
Because of the angle I am going to use here, I will omit any commentary on the editorial and Mr. Roopnarine’s missive and focus on how humans approach life using the expressions of Geralda Dennison and Chery Noel, Nigel Hinds and Maurice Arjoon.
The object of the argument here is to remind readers that one of the pitfalls of history is that it is filled with our own way of seeing things based on our experience.  Interesting to note when I spoke to Ms. Noel on her interview, she told me that there were reactions from people who didn’t see Burnham the way she did. When she said that to me, I immediately thought of how we humans see life.
When your child or wife or husband was the victim of a nasty hand of a ruler, your emotions will naturally contrast with those who benefitted from the ruler. It was just a few days ago, I carried in one of my columns a conversation I had with my good friends Drs. David Hinds and Nigel Westmaas on one of the daughters of Burnham.
It was clear to me that David understood her position and accepted it that she loved her father and will not judge him in a context of wrong-doing. It appeared to me that David accepted her perspective. I took the position that I understand but cannot accept.
Of Burnham, Dennison wrote; “He was unassuming and at ease with himself. I remember him for his sense of humour, his sense of fun, from my days as a typist in the Government Probation Service, when, in between cases, he would sit at the side of my desk and chat with me, and it helped to make my day.”
Dennison writes in her letter that Burnham meant well but the dreams he had were left to others to see through and they couldn’t cope. Unfortunately, she didn’t elaborate on those opinions. In contrast, Cheryl Noel took the position that Burnham had her father arrested and charged because her father defied Burnham on a position Burnham held. She went on to describe how destructive to the family was Mr. Burnham’s action.
If it is true what she was saying then her father’s plight has an eerie similarity with Maurice Arjoon and I told Ms. Noel about the Arjoon case. I met Mr. Arjoon and his wife one a night as they were passing the 24 hours protest vigil in 2012/2013 we had outside of Parliament that we named, “People’s Parliament.”
This was a reaction to the shooting to death of three unarmed protesters in Linden in July of 2012. They told me that as CEO of New Building Society, Mr. Arjoon rejected President Jagdeo’s demand for the Society to invest in the Berbice bridge project. Mr. Jagdeo reacted angrily and there followed his arrest and charge for fraud.
While his trial was going on, one of Mr. Arjoon’s sons died. How does the historian treat Arjoon’s experience with those who think that Jagdeo did great for Guyana? One guy who is currently writing down his thoughts critical of the EXXON contract in the newspapers is chartered accountant, Nigel Hinds.
Hinds once published a letter in this newspaper castigating me for my anti-Jagdeo commentaries. He thinks Mr. Jagdeo was a great president. But don’t we have here the Arjoon/Noel syndrome? What suffering did Hinds ever endure under Jagdeo? The answer is none.

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