Sonia Parag incident: Irfan Ali versus Forbes Burnham

Nov 11, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – There continues to be persons that belong to Guyana who find Forbes Burnham a brilliant person. But why was he brilliant? Kit Nascimento was on the Gildarie-Freddie Kissoon Show and he said that Forbes was an incredible speaker. Indeed he was.

Once you have a Shakespearean reach in oratorical delivery, you will mesmerize and convert your listeners. Three such persons come to mind. As a Guyanese, I would list two from Guyana that were in front of all others in the Caribbean – Forbes Burnham and Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine. The other is from the US – Barack Obama.

All three were not as great as people thought they were but the brilliance, the absolute magic in the use of language made people embraced them. Then all three acquired state power. All three were failures in government. Space would not allow for an elongation on Roopnaraine and Obama.

The Commission of Inquiry into the assassination of Walter Rodney tells the story of how soon after Independence the Burnham magic began to ebb. No longer necessary to win people with massive use of Latin, Shakespeare and Dickens, Burnham settled down to rule.

But Burnham’s use of power was devoid of astute intellectualism and philosophical fulcrums. Guyana became sovereign in 1966 and by 1974, Rodney began to make inroads into African Guyanese constituencies including the security forces as the Commission was told.

At the turn of the 1970, a moment presented itself for Burnham to really be great by healing the ethnic wounds and embracing vast constituencies that were either on the side of the opposition, PPP or that were not supportive of Burnham.

The huge increase in sugar price on the market was the opportunity. The state had enormous resources to build an ethnic consensus thus creating for Burnham, an ever lasting legacy.

Burnham chose to use sugar money based on his narcissist instincts and autocratic mentality of which the most egregious misdirection was the imposition of the Sugar Levy in which sugar funds were used in areas that had immense ethnic sensitivities – creation of National Service which became compulsory for UG students; expansion of the traditional security system to include the People’s Militia and Guyana National Service; the birth of the paramountcy of the party etc.

By the time the economy ran into trouble at the beginning of the 1980, Burnham had become a hated figure barely escaping the violent overthrow of his government by Walter Rodney in 1979. By mid 1980, Burnham’s credibility vanished in the vast forest of Guyana’s 83, 000 square miles with the assassination of Rodney.

In August 2020, a new president emerged, Dr. Irfan Ali. The next year, 2021, Guyana’s economy resembled the beginning of the 1970s – there was income to spend; substitute sugar for oil.

But Ali since 2021 has astutely avoided the pitfalls of Forbes Burnham. Ali has now a Bible of historical instructions, a Bhagavad Gita of historical political lessons and a Koran of historical warnings to guide him. And he is internalizing the mistakes of Forbes Burnham fast.

Enter Sonia Parag. The Public Service Minister was prevented from offering a service for the people of Beladrum because her presence in Belladrum is part of the roadways that Ali has gone into avoiding the potholes of Burnham’s highways.

There has been a relentless projection of the president in vast territories of African presence. In each instance, he has promised the advent of developmental resources.

Minister Parag’s visit to Beladrum was part of Ali’s learning curve.  Does this new horizon make Ali a genius? It does not. It makes him a sensible leader who understands how to go about attempting to solve protracted sociological problems that Burnham had the opportunity to do but was too autocratic and narcissist to understand.

The prevention of Minister Parag from contributing resources to the people of Belladrum is a manifestation of political fear of the PNC. Could the continuous acceptance of the president’s reaching out to African Guyanese people see the eventual irrelevance of the PNC?

I would say that it is a plausible political theory. The Sonia Parag drama will be repeated because there have been similar dramas elsewhere in African districts. There was Linden and there another display in Mocha Arcadia.

But it is pregnant with disastrous consequences. African Guyanese know that there are oil revenues to go around. They have seen cash grants to diverse dimensions of the society. African villagers have benefited from the incessant visits by the president. African Guyanese are going to embrace government’s policies where oil revenues benefit them. It is a logical thinking on the part of any community anywhere in the world. A repetition of the Parag incident spells disaster for the PNC.

(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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