Guyana Observer News

Freddie Kissoon

The Burnham days are gone. Long gone. But memories of what happened during his reign live on but have taken a shape that none of us would have expected. As Guyanese over the age of fifty reflect on the origin of Mashramani, they will ask themselves millions of questions about what we knew then and what we see now.

To most Guyanese who lived through the political age that gave birth to Mashramani and many other motifs associated with Forbes Burnham, the inevitable reflection presents itself – was Burnham all that bad when we think of what Guyana is today? Were Burnham and his band that horrible as leaders when you see what we have to put up with in this country in 2009?

I speak to many persons from that era and I get the expected answer - Guyana in many ways is as terrible a polity as it was back then and perhaps even more so. This comes from dozens of persons who were participants in the long fight against President Burnham and went through immense suffering for their courage.

It numbs the mind to hear them describe the atrocities that characterize the exercise of power today. These sentiments do not come only from persons who were in the vanguard of the WPA. They come from civil society leaders, academics and business people who have no reason to say anything good about the governorship of President Burnham.

In many ways, then, Mashramani today is an irony of a memory or a memory of an irony. It directs us back to the epoch of Burnhamite domination but it vividly reminds us that the future can be worse than the past.

Paradoxically Mashramani reminds us of what Ras Tom Dalgetty once wrote in a letter about Forbes Burnham. Dalgetty is someone I know very well going back to the seventies. He was very helpful to the WPA in those days.

He admonished us in that letter that we in the WPA should have tried to mellow Burnham rather than seek to remove him. Ras Dalgetty of course has made that observation in hindsight. He came to that conclusion because he sees that the future is worse than the past.

I know Tom was just being emotional. It is the vexation of what Guyana has turned out to be after the fall of the PNC that moves people like Tom and countless others to redirect or reshape their memories.

There is a question that young people always ask the folks who fought Burnham. I believe that inquiry follows WPA leaders and activists in organizations like the GHRA, the original founders of FITUG and like-minded groups wherever they go- why did you guys fight down Burnham so? Now look at the things that pass unprotected that ya’ll would have crucified Burnham for.

I once wrote a similar line in one of my columns about two years ago, and I got a response through the letter pages from one of Burnham’s daughter.
Unfortunately, she misunderstood that line and interpreted it to mean that her father was not a bad ruler and now we are admitting to that. The old saying is so applicable here – two wrongs do not make a right. Not because the PPP may be worse that makes Burnham good. This is unsound logic.
So in today’s Guyana, Mashramani serves that ironic purpose. It drives you to come to grips with today’s reality – Guyana is full of nasty political things that are far more frightening than when the power of Burnham stalked the land. Hard as that is to accept, there is a ring of truth to it.

Take a pencil with a sheet of paper and tick off the policies of Burnham that brought us out into the streets with pickets, vigils and confrontations with the police. Then juxtapose those items on your page with what we see now. The truth has to be faced. Those who told us we would have crucified Burnham for these acts are deadly accurate in their assumption.

What has come over the psyche of this nation? Why many petty acts of indiscretions of the PNC under Burnham drove us to fight with Burnham, and we stand motionless when grave venalities have become the norm in this land?

This essay will run out of space if we make up another list, this one enumerating the wrongs of the PPP. Burnham nationalized Guyana but the property known as Guyana remained in the legal name of the Guyanese nation. Today the rulers, their families and acolytes have legally purchased Guyana.

In a forthcoming column, I will tell you about another Pradoville being carved out.

Happy Mashramani!