FORBES
Peeping Tom
Kaieteur News
August 7, 2004
IN celebrating the life of Forbes Burnham, we must accept that to many in our society he still remains a larger than life figure, a man whose political dominance of the country has left us with a personality cult that exists even nineteen years after his demise.
But we must equally also accept his political flaws and seek to ensure that the lessons of his time are never forgotten, for this country had paid a price that no nation in the Caribbean has had to pay for having had the great misfortune of succumbing to the enticements and charisma of Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham.
Forbes Burnham rode to power on a chariot driven by the CIA and British imperialism. Burnham did not lead us out to ethnic chaos. He was propelled to power on the back of ethnic strife and division, which saw some of the worst forms of political violence in this country. To say that Burnham led us out of ethnic conflict is like saying someone who started a fire must be credited with extinguishing it.
During his rule, open ethnic conflict was replaced by a more terminal cancer: deep ethnic insecurity and alienation as he pursued policies that led to a deepening of ethnic suspicion and alienation. Burnham's biggest political blunder was that he never recognised the ends are just as important as the means.
Having come to power through civil disorder it was difficult for him to do anything to contain ethnic insecurity, especially since he had to favour his own constituents.
Burnham's terror campaign and his alliance with the CIA to remove his former mentor, Cheddi Jagan from power, allowed Burnham to lead Guyana into independence. But let us not forget that Burnham at one time opposed independence for our country. As everything else, Burnham wanted things on his own terms and for his own interests.
And let us remember to teach our children that the deal that Burnham made for our independence involved reopening the Venezuelan claim to two-thirds of our territory.
Burnham did not give us a sense of national pride and dignity. Burnham and his socialist experiment made us the mocking stock of the Caribbean. Guyanese were humiliated when they went to the sister islands in the Caribbean.
People would push bread at Guyanese and urge them to "eat up", knowing that Burnham had outlawed this basic staple from the Guyanese diet. Sniggers would also be made about the fact that we could only take US$40 out of the country.
Where was the pride in being Guyanese when thousands had to leave to avoid the hard times and oppressive internal environment? Where was the dignity is our traders having to sleep at airports so as just to make a dollar?
Where was the pride in the long lines in the country? Where was the pride that Guyana suffered a brain drain under Burnham? Where is the pride when we could not pay our debts?
Where is the pride when Guyana, under Burnham bankrupted the Caribbean Multilateral Facility?
It is tribute to the kindness of Guyanese that there were never any food riots. Guyanese stood in lines for days on end to get basic food items. This is the dignity that Burnham gave to his people. Punishment Never Ceased. It is true that the indigenous food base was strong but it could have been stronger had he paid greater attention to the infrastructure needs of farmers.
Burnham was good at sloganeering but most of his national slogans came to naught. We were supposed to feed, clothe and house ourselves by 1976.
1986 came, Burnham was dead, and Guyanese were still nowhere near to feeding, clothing or housing themselves. Self-sufficiency was another silly campaign. Self-sufficiency was more of a response to the need for us to cut our food import bill because of the problems in the economy.
It is all well and good for a country to provide for its own internal needs. But this cannot happen in an economy like Guyana and one that isolated itself from the rest of the world.
This was the mistake in Burnham's self-sufficiency drive. Burnham isolated Guyana through his trade policies and then justified this isolation by urging Guyanese to be self- sufficient.
Burnham despoiled many good policies by the manner in which he went about doing things. Take for example free education.
Burnham rushed this. Instead of working with the religious and private schools to achieve this goal, he plunged straight into state control with the result that the task of delivering quality free education flopped. Free education ended up leading to costly education, paid for by increased foreign debt and additional burdens on taxpayers.
Burnham revealed himself a political coward and dictator. He murdered his political opponents and rigged elections to stay in power. He actively sought political credibility in order to gain an international credibility to compensate for his lack of domestic legitimacy.
And he was successful in becoming a respected international figure advocating the virtues of non-alignment and supporting liberation struggles the world over. But in the end his deeds caught up with him.
At his funeral, most of the leaders of the Caribbean and most of his friends in the non-aligned movement were absent.
Burnham's name and his time continues to gain attention in Guyana simply because the present rules in Guyana seem devoid of vision and are allowing the IMF and World Bank to run this country without resistance.
It is the present crop of rulers in this country, whose lack of intellectual genius and absence of sure-footedness make Burnham still a relevant reference point for our country.
For many, Burnham will still be a hero. He did a lot of things for a lot of people and those people will not forget it. But he was an evil and diabolic ruler who also brought this country to its knees.
With better leadership today, Burnham could have been relegated to a footnote in history.