The PPP and PNC are twins
Freddie Kissoon column
Kaieteur News
March 14, 2007
Yesterday was an interesting day for newspaper readers. One independent daily, the Kaieteur News, printed a letter by PNC Parliamentarian Aubrey Norton who, in reply to my Monday column, tried to situate Forbes Burnham in the context of creating history.
The other daily, the Stabroek News, reported on President Jagdeo's speech last Sunday on the death anniversary of Cheddi Jagan in Berbice, in which he exhorted his audience to combat efforts of the media to distort Jagan's contribution to Guyanese history.
Here we have a young leader from the PNC desperately trying to transform into fact the fiction that his leader, Forbes Burnham, was a creator. Across the political divide, we have a young PPP leader in a frantic attempt to do the same for his leader.
Both of them want to perpetuate the myth of their respective leaders being creators. President Jagdeo urged his listeners to do research in order to save Dr. Jagan's credibility from attack.
It was a call that may backfire on the President, because the more research you do, the more you learn of how destructive Jagan, and Burnham, were. They were destroyers, not creators. The PPP and PNC think alike, act alike, and react alike. They are twins. No wonder they came close, in 1985, to merging as one party.
We will look at the theme of doing research on Dr. Jagan, as the President urged, in another article. For now, let's expose the deception of Aubrey Norton. In yesterday's KN, Norton tried to do what most, if not all, PNC pro-Burnham ideologues do – attack the messenger because the message was too trenchantly piercing.
What is Norton complaining about? An inconsequential mistake of mine which has NO, and I repeat: absolutely NO relevance to my quintessential point that Burnham was a manipulator who had no intention of sharing equal power with Cheddi Jagan.
According to Norton, in 1975, Burnham offered Jagan to participate in Government. The formula of Burnham was based on the results of the 1973 elections. The main contestation in my Monday column was that Burnham was cynically Machiavellian in his proposition because the 1973 elections were rigged so the results were a moral fraud. How can you share power on the basis of a number that has no foundation in reality?
Norton does not reply to that rebuttal of mine. Here is what Norton did, and it shows the nature of the PNC leadership.
In advancing my theory that Burnham was a scheming autocrat to have used the results of the 1973 elections to offer Jagan sharing of power in 1975, I cited the year 1973 instead of 1975. But how does the mixing up of the year detracts from my essential point that the 1973 elections results could not have been the basis of sharing the Government with Jagan?
It simply means that once Jagan had accepted that framework, he would have ended up being the minority in the configuration because the 1973 elections were rigged.
Let us quote Norton; “In 1973, there was no such initiative (Burnham's offer to Jagan of power-sharing). However, Kissoon ‘ingeniously' pushed a fact of history to a date that suits himself -1973.”
But why is that date convenient to me, and how does it take away from my thesis that Burnham was not sincere but devilish when he asked Jagan to join his Government in 1975 based on the results of the 1973 elections?
Well, I am now going to put Mr. Norton in a quandary, and I would like to see how he gets out of it. My bet is that he will not reply. He will not answer me because Burnham's negative role in history cannot be denied, just as how one day President Jagdeo will come to know (if he hasn't already) that Jagan's negative role in history cannot be denied.
Here we go, Mr. Norton. I genuinely made a mistake when I wrote that in 1973 Burnham offered a peace formula to Dr. Jagan. I will now summarise the central theme in my Monday column. Here it is: in 1975
(does that satisfy you, Mr. Norton; well, please reply) Forbes Burnham propounded a solution to Guyana's racial division by inviting the PPP to share power.
The shape of the Cabinet and Parliament would be based on the composition of Parliament in that year 1975. Dr. Jagan refused. Dr. Jagan was right to reject Burnham's sinister plot because the composition of Parliament in 1975 was based on the results of the rigged 1973 elections in which the PNC got a majority in Parliament. I am contending then, Mr. Norton, that Burnham was trying to deceive the world.
Mr. Burnham ended up deceiving Aubrey Norton and not the world. It is Norton who still believes that Burnham was sincere, not the world. You see Mr. Norton, Burnham was hoping to proclaim to the world that he was the good guy and Jagan was the bad guy, because he reached out a hand to Jagan but Jagan refused the patriotic gesture.
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the whole truth is that Burnham's invitation was based on a condition that any decent human being would have had to reject. It was based on a lie. It was based on an act of human indecency. It was based on fraud.
That lie, that fraud, that act of human indecency was that, in 1975, the composition of the Guyana Parliament did not reflect truth, justice, honesty, legality, morality and ethical behaviour. That Parliament in 1975 came into being because the 1973 elections were rigged.
Jagan's insistence of a 50/50 share of Government was a more decent proposal. Burnham rejected it, of course. He rejected it because he, Burnham, had to have the majority in Parliament and he, Burnham, had to retain the headship of the Government. Burnham had no intention of sharing power on an equal footing with Dr. Jagan and the PPP.
Yes, he would have brought Jagan in, but only as second to him in Government.
Let me help you to save face, Mr. Norton. I would suggest that the next time you extol Burnham's power-sharing dream of 1975, it is best to argue that the 1973 elections were free and fair and that Burnham won an honest majority.
That is the only way you can save your fictionalisation of Guyanese history. And by the way, in the 1975 power-sharing blueprint of Burnham, Burnham was to retain the Prime Ministership,
One day you will learn, Mr. Norton, about who Burnham really was.