By Dr Bertrand Ramcharan
Maurice Odle’s 2024 book, An Eventful Life, carries some precious historical insights into Guyana’s predicament and future. It is also insightful into the life of a Guyanese who worked hard for an education, and then served Guyana, CARICOM, and the United Nations with heart.
Giving an insight into the mind of Forbes Burnham, Odle writes about his meeting in London in 1966 with Prime Minister Burnham. Burnham asked him what he would recommend to better serve Guyana other than what the PNC was then doing. Odle took the opportunity “to propose the power-sharing strategy that a New World Group publication had recommended a few months earlier”. He writes: Burnham responded that he was not prepared to go that route so early in his term of office and that what his African supporters expected was a period of consolidation and furtherance of their interests which had been neglected by the development strategies of both Premier Jagan and the previous colonial system.
Burnham added, “very pointedly, that if the PPP were ever to regain office, its pro-Indian economic policies would surely return”. Odle commented: “I was so shaken up by Burnham’s views, that when I returned home that evening I found great difficulty in falling asleep.”
