Dear Editor,
The fever of elections in Guyana produces protean manifestations of unimaginable infections and Stabroek News of the 15th inst provided a ready and willing waiting room for the patients to congregate. The column of Dr H Jeffrey ‘Alliance did not bring down the PPP’ and Jerome Khan’s letter, ‘We should not be held to ransom by our history,’ respectively were worth reading, if only in the context of their earlier but discrete involvement with the machinery, practices and ambitions of the two juggernauths of politics, ie PPP/C and PNCR. However, not only did they have one common nemesis in mind, ie former President B Jagdeo and, by extension, the PPP/C, but a common artifice by way of revisionist history, as has now become fashionable.
Jeffrey, in a somewhat ingenious tactic but meretricious strategy terminated his discourse by concluding “a strategy much wider in scope had to be developed for alliance alone could not bring down the PPP.” Tucked away at the beginning 14 lines earlier his analysis did identify 1961 as the year in point, artfully omitting that in 1964 a post-electoral alliance, stage-managed by the USA/UK via the Governor of British Guiana did oust the PPP from government. This fact is made clear in a stunningly researched publication, US intervention in British Guiana: a Cold War story by Stephen G Rabe, Professor of History at the University of Texas, authographed and presented to me in 2009 by a former Senior Vice-President in the Burnham government, a Guyanese of rare erudition and universal recognition.
At p 123 appears this passage:
“Kennedy had, however, paved the way to power for Forbes Burnham, a political leader who had exacerbated racial tensions in British Guiana. What the President would have thought of Burnham’s two decades of misrule cannot be determined. But the President’s fervent admirers, like Arthur Schlesinger, subsequently regretted the administration’s opposition to democracy in British Guiana.”
At p 137 appears another:-
“The 7 December electoral results generally met CIA expectations.
“Jagan and the PPP made an impressive showing, winning 45.8 percent of the vote, up from the 42.6 they won in 1961.
“But under proportional representation in the single national constituency, the PPP merited only twenty-four of the fifty-three parliamentary seats. About the same percent of the electorate as in 1961, 40.5 percent, voted for the PNC, whereas D’Aguiar’s UF fell from 16 percent to 12.4 percent. Governor Luyt asked Burnham, who controlled twenty-two parliamentary seats, to form a government in conjunction with D’Aguiar, whose party earned seven seats. The Burnham-D’Aguiar coalition took power in British Guiana on 15 December 1964.”
And for completeness I would add at p 162, this passage:
“Forbes Burnham and his People’s National Congress practiced the politics of squalor in Guyana. Burnham, who created a personality cult, dominated the nation until he died from a heart attack in August 1985. The PNC, under Burnham’s henchman, Desmond Hoyte, carried on until 1992. Burnham and his followers perpetrated despicable crimes against the Guyanese. They rigged elections, murdered political opponents, persecuted Indians, stole money, ruined the economy and impoverished the nation.
“They created a society of crime, misery, fear, and hunger.
“International observers began to compare the squalid nature of life in Guyana to that in Haiti under the crazed dictator François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier (1957-71) and his venal son Jean-Claude Duvalier (1971-86).”
And in another 2006 publication Safe for Democracy – The secret wars of the CIA by John Prados, a National Security Historian, at p 18-19:
“But because Jagan did not obtain an outright majority, a coalition would have to follow. The British governor simply refused Jagan the opportunity to put one together… Burnham went on to rule like a dictator until he died in office, as racist and imperious as many had feared. Guyana’s export industries of sugar, rice, and bauxite atrophied. By 1984 the wheel had come full circle and Burnham publicly accused Washington of trying to undermine his government by encouraging striking bauxite workers – shades of the CIA in 1963. Guyana did not have another free election until 1992. When it did the nation elected Cheddi Jagan. Washington still had trouble coming up with a reasonable policy – Jagan had to reject an American nominated for ambassador who had been one of the labor leaders the CIA had arrayed against him.”
As for Jerome Khan’s assertion about 21-year-old Saieed I Khalil’s apparent embrace of history not peddled by the PPP/C, was the result of his education (‘The answer is education’), well, well! it seems that the PPP/C’s education policy is not only alive and well but is commendable. Credit must go to the current government for this achievement. Young people, take note. A word of caution to Mr Khalil: Education is a continuing process and I am sure that Mr Khan will be the first to admit that his experiences, both academically and politically, since he returned to Guyana are prime examples of this. For his information “critical support” was given only for the nationalisation of the bauxite industry. Editor, permit me this final observation. The aphrodisiac of oil which seems to enhance Uncle Sam’s economic interests now appears on Guyana’s horizon and hence, the upsurge in its activities on Guyana’s mainland.
Yours faithfully,
Justice Charles R Ramson SC
Attorney-General and Minister
of Legal Affairs (rtd)
