Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham became an autocrat, dictator, whatever description suits you, under our 1966 independence constitution, with its non-executive governor/president titular head of the government and armed forces; prime minister directly answerable to the national assembly; Westminster-type separation of powers; right to prorogation, etc. In other words, Burnham was already an autocrat when the 1980 constitution was promulgated, and it was because he was more or less absolute ruler that he was able to devise that constitution to entrench the powers he thought befitted his presidency.
Using rigged elections to perennially keep himself in government, the PNC ‘founder leader’, with his Westminster type control of the executive and the legislature, easily brushed aside the judiciary and other institutions such as the titular head of state. The arguments for and against the PNC’s rigging of elections are not of importance here; what matters is that at the time of the promulgation of the much berated 1980 constitution the PNC autocracy was about a dozen years old!
More than three decades later, something similar to what occurred under the PNC happened to the PPP/C. The latter came to office in 1992 with high hopes of transforming Guyana into a modern democratic nation, but structural and political factors led it to taking a similar autocratic road to that of the PNC.
