Aside from the impoliteness of local officials being kept waiting for four hours for the arrival of Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda in April of 1975, a US diplomatic cable related what it saw as a creeping merger of the party and the state which saw the PNC flag flying on all government ministries and the Guyana Court of Appeal building.
The April 28, 1975 cable from the US embassy here to various other missions overseas in the name of then Ambassador Max V. Krebs related how Guyana’s officials and the diplomatic corps had to cool their heels for four hours at the Timehri airport awaiting the arrival of Kaunda who was on a stopover in Haiti.
The cable stated that the fact that secretaries of the ruling PNC were for the first time in the airport receiving lines immediately after Government of Guyana ministers but before Ministers of State and foreign diplomats “illustrated the creeping defacto merger of party and state. The predominance for the first time of PNC flags over Guyana flags on the fronts of all govt ministries and even on the appeals court building gave added public evidence of that trend”.
The PNC’s Sophia Declaration which was delivered by Prime Minister Forbes Burnham on 14th December, 1974 was seen as being the seminal document setting out the paramountcy of the PNC over the state.
Krebs’ cable said the visit by Kaunda and that of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau at the same time “served PM Burnham’s purposes, namely, to add to his external prestige and internal standing and to encourage Guyanese to have more pride in themselves and their country”.
Krebs also related how Kaunda and his entourage had proceeded from the Timehri airport to Georgetown in a “fleet of Cadillacs and other U.S.-built cars which were purchased specially for visits of foreign dignitaries”.
The full text of the cable follows:
