Rodney found nothing commendable about Burnham

Apr 08, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

---

It is part of the revisionists’ stock- in-trade to look but to see only what they want to see. This lopsided way of seeing then becomes the basis for justifying political somersaults in praxis, such as the one which has been undertaken by the party of Walter Rodney, the Working People’s Alliance (WPA).
Burnham, just before the assassination of Walter Rodney, described the WPA as the Worst Possible Alternative. But even the worst of revisionists, with their tainted and slanted views of political history, would not commit the cardinal sin of attributing all criticisms of Forbes Burnham solely to the PPP and its supporters.
Burnham has his detractors even within his own party and most definitely within the WPA. Among those who saw nothing redeeming in Burnham was Walter Rodney.
Walter Rodney was no PPP supporter or admirer. In fact, he made it clear to Jagan that when he is finished dealing with Burnham, he would turn his attention to him (Jagan), the other leaders of his generation. He was cocksure of himself, that fellow Rodney.
Rodney found nothing commendable about Burnham, nothing. He said that Burnham had a special touch which, quite unlike Midas who turned everything he touched in gold. Rodney said that everything Burnham touched turned into ‘ka-ka’.   He lampooned Burnham publicly naming him King Kong and ‘Fatboy’.
In his famous street-corner address, entitled “People’s Power; No Dictator”, Rodney deconstructed the Burnhamite dictatorship. He accused Burnham of placing himself above the people by creating a personality cult and of being unaccountable. He said that Burnham disguised his dictatorship by going through the trappings of a democracy. The Burnham dictatorship, he observed surrounded itself with lackeys, stooges, misfits and square pegs in round holes and stooges – sounds familiar?
“People’s Power; No Dictator” remains one of the best deconstructions of dictatorship. And it is publicly available online to be read.
Rodney in that speech described Burnham as devious. He colourfully repeated what a woman has said about the then Prime Minister, “Burnham mek Satan cry.” He declared Burnham as the national three card con artist champion.
Between 1978 and 1979, Rodney and the WPA saw the PNC as being beyond renovation. The PPP, on the other hand, never took such an extremist position. Facts are facts and while the revisionists may wish to see it as a dagger of division, it is undeniable that the WPA and Rodney saw Burnham as being incapable of being restored.
In 1977, the PPP floated a proposal, which called for a National Patriotic Front. This Front was to include the PNC. The WPA never agreed to that proposal.
The WPA saw the PNC as the problem and not part of any solution. In August 1979, it gave its own solution. It called for a Government of National Unity and Reconstruction. In that formation, the WPA saw absolutely no role for the second largest political party in Guyana, the PNC. Rodney too saw no role for Burnham and the PNC in a post-PNC government.
The idea therefore that those on one side of the political divide fail to see any good in Burnham is not a PPP creation. It is the handiwork of the WPA.  The PPP envisaged a role, a major one at that, for the PNCR in their proposal for a National Patriotic Front. It was the WPA and Rodney, which sought the erasure of the PNC, the same party to which it is now opportunistically clinging.
The WPA was also critical of the PPP’s ‘critical support’ to the PNC. The WPA condemned the PPP’s conciliatory approach to the PNC. The WPA instead said that it was better for to have been ‘critical exposure’ rather than critical support. The WPA was therefore vehemently ill-disposed towards any partnership involving the PNC.
Whenever the revisionists therefore seek to argue that  PPP supporters place all the responsibility for the country’s woes on the PNC, these revisionists must be reminded that at one time the WPA saw no role for the PNC in the finding a solution to Guyana’s political and economic crisis.
Well, the tides of history has changed. The WPA is now a deracinated from any pretensions of political independence.    The WPA is now piggybacking on the PNC’s electoral strength and like a parasite is sucking political oxygen and nutrients off of the PNC.
There is no need to drive a wedge between the WPA and the PNC. There is nothing to divide the two; the WPA has been reduced to a razor slim foreskin of the APNU of which the PNCR is the dominant party,
The WPA sees its future – indeed the political and economic survival of its members – as being linked with that of the APNU. It is not seeking independence from the PNCR. It seeks only to create conditions for its own survival and it is precisely that which makes it so dangerous.

---

---