Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Aug 11, 2008 News
The National Assembly, on Thursday last, unanimously approved a motion to honour the contributions of the late Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham.
The motion was tabled successfully by Leader of the main opposition party, Robert Corbin.
The motion has now made it possible to have due recognition given to the service of Burnham to Guyana. The motion also requested that the Government prepare and publish a collection of the former President’s speeches spanning his tenure in the National Assembly for display in the Library of the National Assembly.
Another resolve clause in the motion mandates the National Assembly to call on the Government to designate a State institution to be responsible for historical research and documentation to chronicle and archive all of the works of each of the Presidents of Guyana for the benefit of future generations of Guyanese.
In presenting the motion, Corbin told the House that the pledged support for the motion signals a significant development and maturity, demonstrating that politicians were prepared, in a non-partisan way, to give credit where it is due, and ensure that future generations can dispassionately judge from the facts, make their own analyses and arrive at their own interpretations of Guyana’s history.
According to Corbin, August 6, 1985 brought to an end the life of a man who had to his credit a distinguished academic career; earned the accolade as a luminary in the legal profession, and was a leading fighter against colonialism in the struggle for Guyana’s political independence.
He was also the founder/member of the two major political parties in Guyana; the first Prime Minister of independent Guyana; and the first Executive President.
“We in the PNCR recognise him, however, as a visionary who was the founding father of an independent Guyana….His vision was to establish an egalitarian society where all races would enjoy social justice and political and economic emancipation….The pursuit of these objectives at the height of the Cold War was considered too dangerous by the West for the Caribbean region, as his successful efforts could have empowered other leaders in Latin America and Africa to follow similar socialist policies that were opposed by the West…Consequently, he faced severe obstacles, both internal and external, as he introduced economic policies and programs to lay the foundation for the psychological, mental, cultural and economic liberation for Guyana.”
In seeking to sum-up Burnham, Corbin related to the House that the late leader was born in Kitty, on February 20, 1923, to James Ethelbert and Rachel Abigail (nee Sampson) Burnham.
LFS Burnham received his primary education at the Kitty Methodist School before moving on to Central High School, and then to Queen’s College in 1935.
In 1942, he received the highest scholastic award in the country at that time, the British Guiana Scholarship, an annual award reserved for the scholar attaining the highest grades at the Senior Cambridge Examinations held locally.
Because of the Second World War, he studied for the Bachelor of Arts Degree externally and earned it at the External Examinations of the University of London in 1944.
He later travelled to London and earned his Bachelor of Laws (Hons.) degree at the University of London in 1947.
In 1948, he was admitted to the bar of the Society of Gray’s Inn, London.
In 1947, he was elected President of the West Indian Students Union in London, a position which allowed him to participate as a delegate of the Union in the International Union of Students’ Congress in Prague (1947) and Paris (1948).
In 1951, he married Sheila Bernice Lataste. They had three daughters: Roxanne, Annabelle, and Francesca.
In 1957, he married Viola Victorine Harper. Their union produced two daughters, Melanie and Ulele Burnham.
He returned to Guyana in 1949, and immediately involved himself in national and local politics.
He joined the Political Affairs Committee in that year, and along with Dr. Cheddi Jagan and others, founded the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), at which time he was elected as its first Chairman in 1950.
In 1952, Mr. L.F.S. Burnham was elected to the Georgetown Town Council. In 1959, he became Mayor of Georgetown, and again in 1964.
In 1953, when the PPP Government came to power after the first elections held under universal adult suffrage, Burnham was appointed Minister of Education. It is common knowledge that, despite winning 18 out of the 24 seats in the Legislature, that Government lasted only 133 days.
By 1959, he was elected President of the Bar Association of British Guiana, and after a relatively brief period of practice, took sick in 1960.
On his return to British Guiana, LFS Burnham also became proactive in the trade union movement, as did most of the political leaders at the time, and by 1952 was elected President of the British Guiana Labour Union, where he served until 1956.
He was again elected in 1963 and 1965, and subsequently became President-General of that union, a position which he held until his death.
After the unfortunate split of the original PPP, in February 1955, he became Leader of the People’s Progressive Party (Burnhamite), which unsuccessfully contested against the PPP (Jaganite) in the 1957 general elections, after which he renamed and reorganized his faction under a new name, the People’s National Congress.
He became the Founder Leader of that party, a position he also held until his death.
He returned to this House as a Member of the British Guiana Legislature after the 1957 elections, and was Leader of the Opposition between 1957 and 1964. He was elected Prime Minister in the coalition Government with the United Force after the first elections under the system of proportional representation in 1964, and he remained a Member of this Assembly after Independence on May 26, 1966 until 1980, when he assumed the office of Executive President under the 1980 Constitution. Altogether, he served in this Chamber in excess of thirty years. (To be continued)
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