Dear Editor,
I refer to the letter titled ‘Aspects of Burnham’s vision are still relevant’ (SN, July 11). Burnham’s vision was very different from his execution. Some aspects of his vision are still relevant today. One example is self-sufficiency. However, leaders are judged based on performance, not visions, dreams, aspirations and goals. It is about execution, performance, achievement and results. On that front, Burnham was a complete failure. So, were the Jagans. I have serious problems with the selective, cherry-picked, snapshot analyses coming from political grasshoppers, opportunists and analysts in reviewing the legacies of our leaders. They avoid doing the right thing in assessing the entire picture and the integrated output. This big picture measure is the only one that matters. By this big picture measure, every leader of the PNC and PPP is a failure. It does not matter if some try to pluck a handful of statistics in selective and convenient fashion to show some areas of possible good measures, those few good areas are overwhelmed by many disastrous factors and the entire canvas is shouting a different tale.
Some may want us to develop tunnel vision but we cannot erase the big picture. The big picture confirms that the PPP and PNC spawned and practised destructive racial politics. The big picture establishes both of these parties have corrupt and dictatorial internal party governance. The big picture confirms every leader of both of these parties has practised racially destructive, politically divisive and corrupt politics and has given us an economic malaise. The big picture confirms that six decades of the PNC and PPP has given us the failed state that Guyana has been since Independence. Some shallow analysts celebrate Burnham as one of Guyana’s greatest nationalists. Others see Cheddi Jagan as the title holder. How could anyone who imposes dictatorship, denies democratic expression, foments racial separatism and distrust, mistreats an entire populace, allows runaway corruption, enslaves himself and party to unworkable foreign ideologies be a nationalist? What was nationalistic about Burnham eventually bowing to US pressure to stop Cubans from using Guyana airspace for refuelling in the Cuban fight in the Angolan civil war against pro-apartheid forces?
As long as people are paying taxes, infrastructure must be built whether by the democrat or the despot. It is rudimentary and expected. It is not cause for celebration or for claiming leadership greatness. When are our analysts, flooding the pages of this newspaper with rank revisionism, going to start being objective and start with the basics. Some nonsense about free education. Well, every socialist or communist leader of Burnham’s (or Jagan’s) era was expected to offer or did offer free education or various versions of the NIS and NBS. There is nothing unique or commendable in these features in a socialist society, and especially one from the sixties to the eighties. The real issue is the quality of these provisions and institutions. We know the answer to that issue. Only in the minds of the politically malleable and confused would the need arise to research whether Burnham’s (or Jagan’s) net contribution is negative or positive. It is unequivocally negative.
The 1973 OPEC oil shock argument is always mounted to wash away some or a lot of the PNC’s failures, notwithstanding the fact that Guyana was a small economy at that time and its oil demand minuscule, something any good leader would have been able to successfully adjust to. Every country suffered from the OPEC oil embargo. Most rebounded. Guyana did not because of failed leadership and because it was already in an economic hole when the OPEC oil crisis hit. This need to toss the OPEC oil crisis into the ring is a fraudulent tactic. So is the insistence that we must isolate the political resistance (primarily from the PPP) to the PNC government in defining Burnham’s net contribution to Guyana. Political opposition is normal and expected. It indicates a healthy democratic culture. One cannot discount it in determining a leader’s contribution, particularly when that leader had the power of dictatorship to bypass that opposition and make decisions beneficial to the country in unilateral fashion. Burnham’s critical support of the PPP in executing some of Jagan’s ideals like nationalizing the bauxite industry cannot be used to reduce Burnham’s overall blame for failed governance. Burnham was running the show. Burnham similarly rejected many of the PPP’s overtures, including ones for a shared government just as the PPP is doing today.
No one in their right mind could ever find the totality of the leadership of the PNC and PPP beneficial to Guyana, even including Desmond Hoyte who restored democracy. The contention is that he only did so after serious US and international pressure and when he did, he handed the PPP an unchanged constitution that ensured the domination and marginalization of his own supporters and the Guyanese in general for 22 years and counting. The travesties of the past 22 years of unchecked power is the real shocking tragedy of Hoyte’s leadership. Desmond Hoyte joined the PNC at the end of the sixties. He deliberately chose to join an organization he knew practised ethnocratic politics. The same applied for those within the PPP. The political dens of the PPP and PNC cannot produce quality leaders. We witnessed the sickness of the PPP and PNC at Port Mourant last year at the PPP congress and now we are seeing it again this weekend at the PNC congress. Clearly, this macabre aspect of Burnham’s (and Jagan’s) vision is still very relevant today. Those PNC and PPP members who are (were) denied membership and will be (and were) prevented from voting at the congress elections are living proof. Isn’t it amazing that the very same thing that happened at the PPP congress is being repeated at the PNC congress? The Australian, European, Canadian and American does not care for small successes when the entire emperor’s new clothes are torn to shreds. Let us stop this revisionist nonsense and look at the state of this country 64 years after the formation of the PPP and start telling the truth.
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
