Days away from the PNCR Congress, former Member of Parliament Aubrey Norton has levelled a verbal broadside at Chairman of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) David Granger for suggesting in his lecture on July 6 that there was no father or mother of the nation in the struggle for independence.
In the inaugural lecture of the National Assembly’s Governance and Democracy lecture series, which took place in Parliament Building, Granger in essence asked, who planted the seed of nationhood? There have been claims and counterclaims and alternative claims but never agreement on the father or mother of Guyana.
“There is no ma or pa for independence here,” he said bluntly. “There is no father of the nation, there is no mother of the nation and I think we need to unlearn this myth.”
Granger said, rather, that a group was responsible for the birth of the nation and that independence cannot be attributed to a single person or to a single party. He credited the workers since they were the first people to “rock the British Empire”.
Responding via a letter published in the Stabroek News on Friday, Norton said that every nation has its national heroes and founding fathers. “It is a part of the process and mystique of nation-building and identification,” he said.
“In a most strange presentation on the history of this country, Mr David Granger has denied Mr Burnham, Dr Jagan, Mr Critchlow and Mr ARF Webber their rightful places in the history of the nation and in nation-building,” he said.
“It is for the PPP and its apologists to deal with Dr Jagan’s role and answer for him. As far as I am concerned, at a very minimum, Mr Burnham has to be acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of this country. The things he did or caused to be done by way of policies, slogans, priorities and constructs, ideological and sectoral, set a tone and placed us on a path that would have been very different if he had not entered politics or if he had migrated, for example,” said Norton.
“Whatever one thinks of Mr Burnham’s policies and whatever grouse one may have against him as a person, there can be no doubt as to his influence – for good according to some and for ill according to others. This is understandable in a country with a divided psyche. However, no useful historical analysis can ignore his influence.”
Norton noted that during his lifetime, Burnham stood “head and shoulders” above every other politician in Guyana on the policy front and in the international arena, “as well as on the floor of Parliament where he was unmatched.”
Norton said Granger’s views of Burnham of not being considered a father of the nation are “especially unorthodox” because he is seeking to be elected as leader of Burnham’s party, “to be one of Burnham’s successors”.
“Why would an aspiring PNC leader take such a position in a party still manned by and large by unreconstructed Burnhamites? Indeed, the battle for the focus on poverty and the small man, the place for African Guyanese in the body politic and for the control of our destiny is a battle with a fuse kindled by Burnham. If there is one thing about which the PNCR is unanimous, it is that the leadership and membership of the party see him as one of the founding fathers, if not the founding father,” said Norton.
“One thing is certain, given his theme, Mr Granger chose the venue for this opening salvo rather well. Many of us are waiting to see how he proposes to sell that assertion in the upcoming PNCR Congress. Is he going to be hypocritical and praise Burnham for the sake of pleasing the members of Burnham’s party?” he asked.
“… I call on the Leader of the Party and the General Secretary to say whether they share these views aired by Mr Granger,” said Norton.
“It is useful to underscore here that the idea of the founding father/s is premised on a number of notions. One such notion sees the founding father as one who has a vision as to where the nation should go and succeeds in ensuring that the vision impacts the nation’s psyche.
“It is apposite to state here that Mr Granger’s presentation is intellectually flawed in that it avers a thesis that it is the originators of the struggle who should be considered the founding fathers. Founding fathers are those individuals that contributed significantly to the formation of the nation. At least Burnham and Jagan should qualify,” said Norton.
He said too that Granger “misses the basics in levels of analysis by seeking to find the answer in the wider national struggle, rather than focusing on the significant role of the individual to the wider societal struggle.”
He said it must be acknowledged that the struggles of the working people are critical to the struggle for nationhood. “However, to use the struggles of the working people to displace the founding father is to miss the notion of the founding father and to ignore the important role individuals play in the formation of nations,” he said.
Norton had recently voiced his support for Carl Greenidge for the position of leader of the PNCR and said that the party would be best served if Greenidge headed it, while Granger concentrated on being the Leader of the Opposition.
