Power sharing talks started on the seawall
Peeping Tom
Kaieteur News
June 21, 2004
THE PNCR, as I predicted, is in the midst of a deep crisis. Reversing itself in so far as the death squad information is concerned, the PNCR, unable to deliver the evidence it claimed it had, has been forced to once again to rely on the man whose emotional outburst started this whole issue: George Bacchus.
When the PNCR has to depend on Bacchus, then you can understand the dire straits in which that party finds itself. I urge the PNCR to test that rope that it is holding on to.
The PNCR cannot support any inquiry into the death squad allegations because to do so would be to court political suicide. Once an inquiry gets going the PNCR will be embarrassed by its failure to deliver the evidence its claims it has.
Therefore, in the next few weeks look forward to the PNCR engaging in diversionary tactics about the PPP tampering with witnesses.
Even more dramatic is when the party which has a REFORM component to it, has to once again go into the past and resurrect the ghost of Forbes Burnham to sell its plea for power-sharing.
I notice that Mr. Aubrey Norton, the former General Secretary of the party, has been given the job of being his party’s torchbearer on this question.
Most of the replies to Mr. Norton’s controversial letter to the press on the issue of power sharing have centered on the disputing of facts and arguing whether Burnham was sincere about power sharing. It is hard to separate the two because it is only from the assessment of facts that one arrives at conclusions.
However, in order to prevent historical revisionism, most of the critics of Norton have set about disproving that Burnham was serious about power sharing, instead of asking why is the PNCR now upping the ante on this topic? They have failed to question the motives that now drive the PNCR to want power sharing.
On a recent television show hosted by Mohamed Khan, Norton claimed that his party is committed to power sharing and that they have the backing of their supporters on this question. I am now asking the supporters of the PNCR to state whether what Norton said on that Big Question show recently, when he appeared as guest with Vic Puran, is true. Are you the supporters of the PNCR behind your party’s proposals for a power-sharing government? Do you want to share power with the present flock that runs this country? Yes, the same group that your leaders accuse of being murderous, incompetent and corrupt?
Of course Norton did say that those guilty of crimes would have to face justice. Well, considering the corruption that the PNCR claims exist, I wonder who will be left to form the government under a power-sharing arrangement with the PNCR. And since the PPP will be the major partner in any power sharing government, how will the Augean stables be cleansed?
There has been, as I mentioned, a debate over facts as to why the joint government talks between the PNCR and PPP of the seventies broke down. According to Norton, it was Mrs. Jagan who precipitated the collapse of those talks. She replied and said no, that it was Burnham and his vulgar behaviour.
I am glad that her memory has not failed her here. I recall that she insisted that she could not recall any incident between 1957-61 in which her husband had tried to defer an education Bill to place 51 religious schools under government control.
I also recall that she denied that the first power-sharing talks took place on the seawall when in the midst of civil riot, Burnham used to drive up to Cheddi’s home and they would go off to the seawall to gaff.
It was not Peeping Tom who made this revelation; it was her son who subsequently repeated that Burnham used to pick up his father and they would go off to the seawall to chat.
Clement Rohee gives another version for the break down of the talks between the PPP and the PNC in the seventies.
His side is not totally contradictory to Mrs. Jagan. He says that Burnham was displeased with an editorial in the Mirror newspaper, which criticised the terms of the nationalisation of the bauxite industry, and he, Burnham, demanded that as a condition for further talks, the editorial be retracted.
Perhaps (and I am speculating here) it was the editorial, which caused Burnham to behave bad and forced the end of those talks in the seventies.
Norton, who claimed that he went through all the Mirror newspapers in his research, must have missed that editorial which Rohee claimed was at the centre of Burnham’s displeasure. Otherwise, Norton is being selective in his analysis.
My point is that if on such an issue the talks broke down then Burnham could never have been serious about an arrangement with the PPP.
In any event, at the time Burnham was firmly entrenched in power and there was no compulsion for him to share power. Jagan on the other hand, and ever since the split, has always wanted his young protégé back within his bosom.
He saw unity between the PNC and the PPP as sealing the split in the working class. It is not that Jagan did not recognise the race-based nature of this split; he did. But he deeply desired to come together with Burnham to unite the working class and forge a socialist society.
Since the early sixties, he wanted to unite with Burnham. This is why he entered into “critical support.” And defining that “critical support” was the damning editorial that was said to have ruffled Forbes Burnham.
Burnham was a sweet-tongued con man. He liked to boast about the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy. But the truth is, as Rohee brought out in his letter, this was no nationalisation of the bauxite industry. We paid for the industry. And in line with the new critical approach dispensation, the Mirror was critical.
Just before Burnham died, there were further talks. By this time, the western world that had kept Burnham in power because they feared a communist Guyana under Jagan, was fed up with the dictator. He had become an embarrassment. He had bankrupted the country, bankrupted the Caribbean Multilateral Facility, was isolated politically, had murdered his political opponents and his human rights record was atrocious.
The country found itself ineligible for international aid from the West and sensing internal implosion, Burnham knew that his only friends were in another block. But he knew Jagan had excellent credentials in this block and his very survival as a leader either depended on greater repression or a deal with Jagan that would allow the eastern block and Cuba to bail him out.
Before this deal could have been sealed, Burnham died. But there are people around who knew what was agreed upon and they should state so. Amongst those people are Clement Rohee and a host of PPP and PNC leaders.
Burnham’s quest for unity with the PPP was always on his terms and about his own survival. The raison d’etre for the power sharing talks had nothing to do with sincerity on the part of Forbes Burnham.
The PNCR is today in desperate straits and it has to resurrect Forbes Burnham to sell its power-sharing plan. What a disgrace that the PNCR has to turn to such a man!
The PNCR knows that the numbers are against it in the forthcoming elections. It cannot go again into a next election with the excuses that it was cheated or its supporters were disenfranchised. The events since 1997 virtually means that the PNCR will be punished again at the 2006 polls and will most definitely lose.
The party knows what are the numbers and how they cannot reverse the voting patterns in time for 2006. So it wants power sharing as a way of mitigating the fallout from the humiliation it will suffer at the next elections. It wants to share power with the PPP because it knows it cannot win the next election.
I hope the supporters of the PNCR who Norton said are behind the party’s plan, understand that the PPP will be the dominant partner under such an arrangement and that Robert Corbin will have to take orders from Bharrat Jagdeo. Is this what they are supporting?