These two men’s narrative is more comical than dangerous

Oct 09, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – In my Tuesday’s column, I looked at an emanation by Henry Jeffrey on a Facebook programme hosted by David Hinds, Jeffrey being one of three guests. The others were Vincent Alexander and Hamilton Green. In that piece, I wrote the words: “What Alexander had to say was essentially comical.”
I will now expand on the utterances on the comical content of Alexander’s presentation and the miasmic propagandistic content of Jeffrey’s delivery. It is important that these fictions and distortions are exposed immediately so they do not creep into the historical record.
It is important too that educated minds reject these false narratives which have been tsunamic from PNC, AFC, WPA and racist quarters since the No Confidence Motion of December 2018 and have intensified since the March 2020 general election.
Jeffrey outlined a case for Burnham’s greatness then in the same breath exclaimed that in today’s Guyana, the PPP government could do whatever it wants. This is unmitigated propaganda. If any government did what it wanted at anytime in any place in any fashion without thinking or caring, it was the regime of Forbes Burnham and Hamilton Green.
The party of Burnham and Green never won an election, therefore where did its authority derive from? Which part of the society empowered Burnham to act as he did? It had to be the security forces that maintained Burnham’s grip on power because no section of the society gave him an electoral mandate.
An electoral mandate does not and should not allow the winner to behave the way it wants to without accountability. The PPP lost two elections – 2011 and 2015. There was a price to pay for not being accountable. Burnham had no price to pay because there was no election to lose. Burnham had permanent power.
It suits the political and ethnic agenda of Jeffrey to omit those crucial dimensions of Guyana’s existence when Burnham dominated the physiology of Guyana. The deadliest manifestations of Burnham’s dictatorship, using Guyana as his private playground are literally countless.
Here are just a few samples of insane use of power. Walter Rodney’s denial of employment at UG; the creation of paramountcy of the party; the imposition of mass games in the education system; compulsory national service; Burnham’s sadism at Hope where, while on horseback, he would ride on public servants compelled to do chores on the estate and they would scamper to avoid being hurt. Now to Alexander.
Once at a Board meeting of the Faculty of Social Sciences, the late Professor Perry Mars made a reference to the poor academic talent of Vincent Alexander, for which Mars immediately apologised. I was at that meeting and felt that Perry, a very good friend, was out of order. But, looking back at that remark of Perry 30 years ago, did he see in Vincent what we couldn’t see then.
Here is what Vincent said was the reason he admired Burnham. He told the panel that one day Burnham said to him that Guyana was a plural society and he was struck by Burnham’s perspicacity. Vincent said when Burnham uttered those words, there and then, he admired the man.
According to Vincent, this conversation took place in the 1970s. What Vincent did not know then (he should have been reading books on Guyana), was that Burnham conned him. Burnham was simply regurgitating one of the important theories in Guyanese sociology popularised in the 1950s by several formidable scholars. Sir Arthur Lewis wrote about the plural society when Vincent was in diapers and the 1959 book, M. G. Smith, “The Plural Society in the West Indies” was compulsory reading in many courses at UG.
Space has run out but here is what Vincent said about an event in 1984 which was not true; which was an abominable fiction. He explained that in 1984 there were talks about a coalition government between the PNC and PPP but that was scuttled by Mrs. Jagan Jagan. Vincent gave his reason which is nonsensical.
He said Mrs. Jagan wanted Indian women excluded from compulsory National Service (NS). Burnham refused but then came up with a compromise – no woman would do NS. Mrs. Jagan then walked out of the meeting and that was the end of talks on joint government.
Why would Mrs. Jagan walk out when Burnham agreed, even though his suggestion was broader than Mrs. Jagan’s? It meant that Indian women would not do NS. What Alexander did not say and he should have turned and asked Jeffrey was the question – who gave Burnham the right to introduce compulsory NS when the PPP in fact was the majority party? Burnham died shortly after and Guyana was saved.

(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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