Dear Editor,
Not so long ago I had a brief chat with Lincoln Lewis, and with sadness he told me a story of stopping at a gas station while on his way to work in Barbados, and hearing a young man (worker/attendant) in a conversation about Guyana, saying all sorts of unsavoury things about former President Forbes Burnham. He said to me he was forced to intervene, and upon inquiring about the young man’s age, he found out that he was not quite yet 25 years old – just about two years old when Burnham died. He lamented that it was so unfair and unfortunate that Burnham is only seen (by this young man) in a bad light, all negative, nothing positive. This he felt was a deliberate and wicked campaign by a political body to besmirch the image of Burnham and erase any good he had done.
When our talk was over, I thought about what he had said and couldn’t help reflecting upon a situation I encountered some years ago with a group of young people I met while on a campaign to the Corentyne with the Guard movement. This time the target was Walter Rodney – he was already dead. Myself and a few others met this group of youths – the oldest was just about eighteen years old – and we tried to get political with them in a nice way. Racism was an issue, but they weren’t in any way interested; they lambasted Rodney − “he was brilliant but stupid”; “he want to kill Burnham but killed himself instead”; he was a CIA agent − there wasn’t a single good thing said about him.
Like Lincoln Lewis, I too felt sad that they spoke of things they were too young to know; obviously they were fed, they even talked about Jagan saying, “Not a cent more” and “Apaan Jaat.” Then finally they said, “We barn and meet the PNC”; “Since I know myself is PNC we whole house is PNC, I can’t change.” We were beaten by this group of teenagers and their pathetic form of reasoning. And sadly that was it, the politics we play.
This is why I think that even with the best of intentions both the PPP and the PNC are invidious and they need each other to exist, like the two blades of a pair of scissors which can’t function one without the other.
Burnham once said that politics, “is a war, it gat kick, cuff, butt and bite,” but we can still shun the low-down, dirty mean things, and be more mature and magnanimous; give respect, credit and recognition where due, lest we become victims, haunted by our own deeds. ‘What goes around come around.’
Yours faithfully,
Frank Fyffe
