Trumpism or Burnhamism

Nov 17, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – Yesterday I read the weekly feature in the Stabroek News, “In The Diaspora” (ITD). The article was titled, “Trumpism stalled: Democracy and the recent American election,” written by an American professor. Here is what the strapline of ITD says – “This is a series of weekly columns from Guyanese in the diaspora and others with an interest in issues related to Guyana and the Caribbean.” How sad that no one from the Guyana diaspora couldn’t do an ITD column on the implications of rigged elections that took place for five months for Guyanese democracy.
Is a society alive and living when a leading newspaper has a weekly feature and the particular editor of that series never carried an analysis of the implication for Guyana’s democracy after five months of a rigging process to deny the factual result of the 2020 general elections but published the very subject but on the American election, not the Guyanese one?
Do you know that there is not another country in any continent in the world where the result of the election is yet to be determined five months after it was held and eerie, macabre, bizarre, illegal, immoral action characterize the entire period yet not one university lecture made a public comment?
Only Dr. Thomas Singh from the Department of Economics at UG wrote a letter in the newspaper on the questionable results. That would not happen in any other nation, no matter how poor that land is. There isn’t a country that can have an election result being thwarted for five consecutive months and the nation’s academics remain silent throughout the period. Such minds should not be allowed to teach the country’s youths. There has to be soul-searching at this important national asset. I graduated from that very institution which was a bastion of intellectual radicalism in the seventies.
Guyana has a group named the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) and an organization titled, Guyana Transparency Institute. These two entities were completely silent for those five months. A country goes through one of its deadliest moments in its evolution and these two bodies just barefacedly refused to discuss the danger of rigged election for democracy and the country’s future. After the factual election results were accepted by Guyana and the world, the GHRA arose from its slumber.
It is getting press coverage over its call for forensic experts to come from Argentina to investigate the murder of the three youths in Cotton Tree in Region Five. How can any society show any respect to the GHRA? How can any young mind tolerate such a deeply disturbed entity?
The title of the “In The Diaspora” column is so apt when applied to Guyana only the name “Burnhamism” should have replaced “Trumpism.” This country should be prepared to fight with every ounce of energy to prevent even a modicum of Burnhamism returning to haunt its citizenry. The most dangerous, tragic and mind-boggling aberration in law, politics and constitutionalism that occurred in the former colonies of the British West Indies was Burnhamism.
At the centre of Burnhamism was runaway authoritarianism that had as its fulcrum, unelected office. Forbes Burnham rode on horseback like a Latin American oligarch throwing cigarettes at young men in low income areas who would jostle each other to catch the item that was banned from importation by the “Comrade Leader” who never ever contested a free election since the country got Independence in 1966.
Burnham rode on horseback on the streets of Georgetown looking like a caricatured English aristocrat because he knew his buffoonery would not undo him when election time came around. He didn’t need votes to stay in power. If the world and the Guyanese people did not confront the fraud that went on for five months after voting day in March this year, the result would have been Burnhamism not Trumpism. It is a person who is beyond redemption that would allow a viewpoint about Trumpism to be published in a weekly column and never touch the meaning of rigged election in Guyana.
The prospects of the return of Burnhamism were wide and extensive after the fraud began on March 4. One just had to take a look at two centrally placed persons in Guyana that had the rigging succeeded, then Burnhamism and permanent power would have overtaken Guyana.
The senior GECOM commissioner is Vincent Alexander, current chairman of the Forbes Burnham Foundation. The then president was David Granger, patron of the Burnham Foundation and a man who on coming to power in 2015, converted his private residence to house four foundations in Burnham’s name and to perpetuate the legacy of Burnham. That legacy is still to be accepted by Guyana and the wider world.

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

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