A fantastic piece of information
Freddie Kissoon column
Kaieteur News
March 12, 2007
I hope this article reaches scholars who write on Guyana but do no live here and therefore lack familiarity with the outflow of information, some of which is so crucially important to understanding the history of this country.
Guyana entered the age of television more than fifteen years ago. There is a plethora of talk-shows, and even though not one of these hosts are educated in the social sciences or history and are engaged in research on Guyana's political sociology, the reflections of the guests on these programmes contribute enormously to the task of unlocking the keys to Guyanese history.
These television items do not reach the Diaspora so researchers on Guyanese history miss out on priceless facts that not only open the eyes of those of us who live here but will prove useful to the next generation.
How often we hear that saying that if we know our past, we will be better equipped to understand the future. These television shows give those who are living in Guyana, an advantage when we discourse on contemporary Guyanese society.
For example, I once told Moses Bhagwan that he has to live in Guyana to comprehend the level to which Tacuma Ogunseye's politics has departed from Walter Rodney's, Eusi Kwayana's and the WPA's that we knew in the seventies. Ogunseye enunciates his new politics through the ACDA magazine shows on television.
It is through his frequent appearances on the talk-show circuit that I come to the conclusion that a commentator like David Granger is a devoted admirer of Forbes Burnham.
On February 20, last, the date on which Forbes Burnham was born, I did a column, published the next day, anticipating what David Granger, Aubrey Norton and Vincent Alexander would tell their audience as they address separate gatherings designed to eulogize Burnham on his birth anniversary.
I took care to mention that all three of these men would distort history because they will obfuscate the evil in Burnham's rule only to deceive their listeners into believing that Burnham was all greatness.
Until yesterday, we didn't know what Aubrey Norton said on February 20. None of the newspapers printed the three men's deliveries. Now Tacuma Ogunseye has written on Aubrey Norton's presentation. It is from that source I will evaluate Norton's theoretical flaws. I hope scholars researching the life and times of Burnham would retain a copy of Ogunseye's letter in yesterday's Stabroek News and this article here.
Since KN and SN are on the internet, access to these two assessments is readily available. We don't know if and when the researchers come to Guyana or even those that are living in Guyana will have access to the television programme that aired Norton's speech.
What Norton told his listeners is that in 1973, Burnham offered Cheddi Jagan a power-sharing formula that would have seen a final configuration of a majority of House members for the PNC. Burnham was to retain the headship of government with Jagan being allocated the position of deputy to Burnham.
I have dealt with this theoretical, political and moral absurdity before when Norton first published it in the form of a newspaper letter. Norton is an exasperating gentleman. He continues to tell his listeners (and readers when he is writing) that this proposal of power-sharing showed the depth of Burnham‘s sincerity in uniting the PNC and PPP for the betterment of Guyana.
This is not only a gargantuan deception of Norton but this pronouncement is replete with moral repugnancy.
In rejecting Norton's deliberate attempt to distort Guyanese history in that previous column, I resorted to a simple analogy which I will repeat again. How can you forcefully and violently eject my family from my land, build two houses on it, fight me for ten years to keep what you do not own, then agree to settle by offering the smaller of the two houses you erected?
By what moral and legal standard are you entitled to own the land much less keep the larger house?
If you use the unethical criterion of race, then Jagan was entitled to the presidency since he probably would have won a greater vote, based on racial-voting. If you use the political yardstick, then we don't know who would have won the 1973 elections, therefore Jagan was in a strong position to argue that he should not be denied majority rule.
Thirdly, the 1973 election was a nasty and diabolical affair. I lived through it. I experienced its fraudulent and farcical nature. How then, using the results of the 1973 elections, could Burnham have offered power-sharing terms to Cheddi Jagan?
But there is more to come. Norton revealed the most unbelievably shocking thing. He said that Jagan demanded a fifty/fifty share of the parliamentary seats and Cabinet positions. According to Norton, Burnham was incensed at Jagan's statistics.
Norton then added his own opinion by saying that Jagan's repudiation of Burnham's framework showed that Jagan was not sincere about unity talks. The real value of Norton's address lies in the way Norton shot himself in the foot with his own gun.
Norton has now contributed to the further erosion of Burnham's already tattered image. Any scholar or commentator with just a grain of training would know the breakdown occurred because it was Burnham that was unreasonable and insincere because the 1973 election could not have been the basis for a negotiation.
It is either Norton is being facetious or he is psychologically incapable of understanding Burnham's highly ingenious ways of manipulating people.
Burnham knew that his opponent would have rejected his blueprint. Any sensible leader would have. Dr. Jagan also had to contend with his wife who walked out of the confabulation.
Another dimension of the failure was the possibility that Jagan's colleagues would not have gone along with Burnham's formula. The negotiations in 1973 were based on Jagan retaining his credibility in the world because he and his party were able to prove to the world that the 1973 elections were rigged.
Life is indeed funny. Norton who loves Burnham so much has unwittingly ended up exposing Burnham as a power-dominating manipulator. Norton also asserted that Burnham told him (Norton) when he was in the youth arm of the PNC, the Young Socialist Movement, that the time had come for power-sharing with the PPP.
Poor Norton! Up to now he hasn't realised that his god lied to him.