Can Alexander tell us the truths about Forbes Burnham’s rule?

Oct 29, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

---

Kaieteur News – If any Guyanese, other than Vincent Alexander, had written the following words, I would have shrugged it off and never think of penning this column, “Reconciliation has been recently touted by the current regime. What has not been touted is truth…let the discourse of the committed continue. Acceptance of, and coming to terms with, the truth shall set us free.” These are the words coming from a gentleman who has been involved in an ocean of untruths that are not banal and ordinary but dangerous, evil and devouring.
We start with the recent untruth of one of the most experienced man on Planet Earth when it comes to knowledge of election rigging. Here is what Alexander wrote in KN on October 22 in response to me, “I challenge Kissoon to state which of the organizations/parties I belong to that contested the elections and further which policy-making position I held in the Government.” Vincent Alexander was nominated by the opposition PNC as part of a three person selection representing the Opposition in GECOM in keeping with the Carter/Price constitutional article.
On becoming the government, the APNU+AFC’s Minister of Education, Rupert Roopnaraine, appointed Alexander as advisor on tertiary education. When Roopnaraine went to the Ministry of the Public Service, Alexander followed in an advisory capacity. For anyone to ignore the input of a government advisor on policy-making is to deny the truth. Alexander of course is the last person on earth that knows anything about the content of truth.
In the seventies when elections and a national referendum were rigged by President Forbes Burnham, Alexander was the chairman of the youth arm of the ruling PNC – the Young Socialist Movement (YSM). From 1968 to 2020, Alexander has denied the truth of the PNC rigging elections. Once he admits to that truth, it should make him free but Alexander has chosen since that time to deny that seminal truth in Guyanese history. Alexander has chosen to remain “Prometheus Bound.”
Let’s further explore the labyrinth of truths with Alexander and, if space permits, ask the question that if admitting the truth of election rigging by Clairmont Mingo and Keith Lowenfield will make him free. Vincent Alexander is the only person from the Burnham era that has founded an institution in Burnham’s name. Called the Burnham Foundation, he functions as its chairman and its website says it is devoted to perpetuating the legacy of Burnham.
For a man who wrote, “Acceptance of, and coming to terms with, the truth shall set us free”, Alexander cannot have his cake and eat it too. He cannot be the chairman of an institution that seeks to preserve the untruths of Burnham’s legacy then in the same breath tell us that accepting the truth shall make us free. After describing the untruths of Burnham’s rule, will Alexander acknowledge them? Let’s start.
Released files from the British secret service agency MI5 revealed that there was a mole in the PPP leadership in the 1950s. MI5 referred to that leader as “Lascar.” I asked Ashton Chase, Hamilton Green and Moses Bhagwan who was Lascar. They said they didn’t know. I found out recently that Lascar was Burnham
Under pressure from the Venezuela Government with threats to block Independence, Premier Burnham agreed to have discussions on the border issue. Burnham did not allow a free and fair national election during his tenure, 1964-1985. Yet in 1975, he formally declared that his party the PNC was of a higher legal authority than the state itself. From there on the PNC was known as the vanguard party.
In an ethnically driven society, with the Indians in the majority and the party that represents them having more electoral power than Burnham’s PNC, was it right for Burnham to ban some essential food items, make national service compulsory, pass compulsory land acquisition legislation, without consultations with the opposition?
On what moral basis did Burnham’s government revoked the teaching appointment of Walter Rodney when his government did not have an election mandate to take such a decision that deprived young Guyanese minds from being exposed to one of the finest talents in Third World academia? Given his autocratic style of governance, wasn’t Burnham a divisive figure that widened the dangerous and terrible ethnic Freudianism that was already there in African and Indian Guyanese?
Space has caught up with us so we cannot engage Vincent (I use his first name because there are times Vincent is a funny man) on the truths of what Mingo, Lowenfield, Myers and former, Police Commissioner, Leslie James, did but I end with a question – was Vincent’s American visa revoked during the visa sanction in August by the Americans?

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

---

---