Dear Editor,
Twenty-five years after the death of Forbes Burnham I am very much surprised that Guyanese are still unable to put his contributions to Guyana into an honest historical context – ‘honest’ being the operational word. I am not concerned about a person’s political affiliation. Everyone is free to back whichever political party they prefer. What I am objecting to is the pushing of propaganda and untruths. I am not so naïve as not to understand that propaganda and untruths are part and parcel of politics, but if someone is engaged in a debate with me I will call them out if I know they are lying or they are trying to mislead.
I have been following the responses, both in letters and blogs, to the letter captioned ‘Burnham achieved nothing’ by Rev Gideon Cecil. My reaction to the letter was laughter. I was surprised that this letter was taken seriously. My laughter stopped when the responses began to flow. The main emotions evoked were those of disbelief and utter dismay.
In relation to the caption, ‘Burnham achieved nothing,’ I point to the present constitution. The fact that after 18 years the new government is not willing to change the constitution of the so called dictator belies the Reverend’s claim. The Reverend would mostly likely be getting a pension from the National Insurance Scheme put in place by Mr Burnham. Of note, the Berbice Bridge received major financing from the NIS. The GPF, the GDF, the judiciary, the entire social, educational and political structure today were all put in place by Mr Burnham after 1966. Those are achievements. Whether seen as good or bad, or whether it is considered his achievements contributed to the betterment of Guyana, depends on your point of view.
One of the most glaring insults to my intelligence is the manner in which the Reverend trivialized the motives of the food bans and restrictions. If his statements were made when my car was being seized by the police at Cove and John, after I picked up a passenger at Mahaica with about ten pounds of flour, I would have agreed with him. But I now have the luxury of hindsight and I am surprised that the Reverend has not seen the light after more than thirty years.
From a business point of view, if Burnham was successful in what he was trying to achieve with the bans, Guyana would have long been the food basket of the Caribbean. The reality is that the majority of banned items could/can be produced in Guyana. The big success story is salted fish. Two points arise from this: Why are we importing chickens and potatoes?
After the ban a few businessmen began expanding their poultry businesses. Guswin was one the ban propelled into action. I remember him pushing a major expansion project, close to the racing circuit, with a foreign investor. Many others invested in poultry. I had a friend at Prospect on the East Bank, who was developing his business gradually. After the bans were lifted in came Didco. Thriving local poultry businesses were devastated and a lot of jobs lost.
Mr Burnham proved that potatoes can be grown in Guyana. Potatoes were successfully grown at Cato. When I touched down at Cato in 1980 on my way to diamond mining I was greeted with a very long quality airstrip. It was freshly built for the project. Of course I heard the sad story of the thousands of pounds of potatoes that were left to rot at the airstrip for want of transportation.
So Burnham’s logistics were probably off at the time, but what about expanding on the potential he exposed. I read the other day about a farmer being offered $5 a pound for his cassava so he ploughed up the crop to plant something else. Why is he in that plight? We should be banning potatoes today. In Cato I saw white, yellow and purple yams, onions and sweet potatoes, growing to sizes at least five times bigger that what I saw on the coastland.
Do you realize what the snack potential of these items on the international market could be? Maybe Burnham’s logistics were not so bad after all. Today’s possibility is a packaging plant in the Cato environs with the potential of flying the products direct to market. Brazil is less than fifty miles away from Cato and Paramakatoi. Fifty miles of road? A piece of cake.
I am not interested in the hysterics and specious claims that the bans were intended to punish a specific group. The reality does not bear this out. This is not to say that I am discounting the impact the bans had on certain religious ceremonies. But here are my retaliations. Why would a man ban a product to disrupt a people’s religion then turn around and give recognitions, with holidays attached, to the same religions?
Why would a man, especially on the path Mr Burnham was on, marginalize by way of food bans, a people who had no ability to harm or affect his trajectory. Burnham already had the solution to being in power for life and he dealt drastically with personal enemies. Further I ask. Would the absence of flour destroy a religion? If today a virus wipes out wheat, would that be the destruction of religions?
Flour was an integral ingredient for my breakfast and dinner. I adjusted the menu to fried or boiled provisions. Attempts at rice flour bread did not turn out well but every time I see an International House of Pancakes (IHOP) restaurant I remember those days and realized what was missing from my rice flour bakes was a touch of syrup. We would have been far by now if we had persisted.
One blogger wrote that the older generation seemed to have a lot of time to waste given their obsession with Mr Burnham. His name should be struck from our discussion. Why? Why is it that Americans still refer to the past 43 presidents, good or bad? Why do their historians review their every strategy? The same should happen in Guyana. Guyanese historians are lagging. This blogger should have the ability to be more informed about Mr Burnham – the most talented and astute politician in Guyana and the Caribbean. By the way, another achievement is Caricom and Carifesta.
I cannot justify the animosity when in fact Africans contributed so much to the development of Indians in Guyana. Firstly, let’s look at Buxton. Today Indians look at Buxtonians with disdain, especially after the Fineman episodes. Well would you believe it if you are told that the East Coast, specifically Buxton was responsible for propelling Dr Jagan into relevance. In 1947-48 the seat Dr Jagan got in parliament was handed to him by that village with help from Sidney King (Eusi Kwayana). It was not by the people in Berbice. He lost there because the regulations required persons voting to sign their names.
Secondly, Africans were the health care providers and educators of the indentured servants. In the absence of traditional medicines African used their home-made cures effectively to save many, many lives. The descendants of African slaves are still waiting on the recognition of their help to the indentured servants. Instead these truths are too often hidden from the descendants.
Burnham arrived from England in 1949. Dr Jagan was elated to have him in the PPP. As a matter of fact Dr Jagan depended on Mr Burnham for almost everything after that. Mr Burnham’s ability and presence made him the front man at discussions, at meetings, etc. Don’t forget that Mr Burnham defended Mrs Jagan in court when she kept a meeting in spite of a freshly imposed law.
The split of the PPP was not ethnic based. It was intellectual. Mr Burnham was seen as the best option even though Dr Jagan was the founder. The political dynamics were showing that Mr Burnham was more moderate in the eyes of the British and Americans. Quite a few Indians followed Mr Burnham. In 1957 two factions of the PPP contested the elections. Dr Jagan’s PPP won.
Burnham used coalition politics to overtake him in 1964 and thereafter rigged elections to hold on to power until his death. We have to be bold enough to see these acts as political expediency from both of these dead politicians and give up on the hate they stimulated for the sake of Guyana’s development. We have to use history to ensure it does not happen again.
Don’t get me wrong. I was/am an avid critic of Mr Burnham when criticism is due. He was a Communist/ Socialist. He tried to lock the population in Guyana just as Castro did. I did not like that but I was willing to see how he would have balanced that ideology with the development of Guyana. The nationalization of the bauxite company was going too far. I was angry. He seemed to be trying to make everything happen within his lifetime. The last five or six years before his death do not argue well for his overall achievements and contributions to Guyana.
I must admit that with the passage of time I have come to realize that, as Mr Hamilton Green wrote, Mr Burnham was indeed ahead of his time in thinking. Bans are required today. Some imports are ridiculous. For instance, KFC, McDonalds, Wendy’s, etc. What are these franchises doing in Guyana?
One last thing; it is something about the PNC’s reign that is very much overlooked. Abu Bakr wrote a balanced piece, ‘The PNC became history’s choice,’ about Mr Burnham’s achievements and his contributions to the development of Guyana. He correctly analyzed that Mr Burnham’s positives slipped miserably about eight years before his death. But remember, that was not the end of the PNC’s reign.
Under Mr Desmond Hoyte the PNC was able to correct the negatives of Mr Burnham’s late lapses and gave the PPP the baton in the positive. No ifs and buts about that. That’s a fact regardless of how it is spun. The new dawn era is not over. We must wait to see what its overall achievement will be. Be sure, if lies about that period are told, I will be standing up in defence. Let the truth reign.
Yours faithfully,
F Skinner
