Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Oct 27, 2013 Letters
Dear Editor,
In the first three weeks of October 2013 the independent dailies, the SN and KN, published quite a few columns and letters on the farcical power sharing and national unity talks of the PPP and PNC that lasted from 1975 to 1985. Some PPP supporters harked back to the days of “national unity” when Burnham and Jagan led a united PPP to victory in 1953. It was Dr Jagan’s, and the PPP’s, narrative that they had achieved “unity” with a resounding victory at the polls with PPP winning two thirds of the seats. But was it really a landslide victory as it appeared to be.
The 1953 elections were held under the first past the post system and the 18 seats that the PPP won was not a true reflection of the wishes of the people. If anything that election highlighted the weaknesses of the first past the post system. Of 205,296 registered voters, only 152,231 citizens voted and the PPP captured 77,613 votes. The PPP got 51% of votes cast but only 38% of the registered voters. So in real terms it was not a landslide victory as the PPP narrative made it out to be, as 62% of the voters did not vote for it, although the PPP was the only nation- wide organized party. One cannot rightly claim that the results reflected “national unity.”
The results merely reflected the pre existing absence of hostile racial competition for political power. Prior to the 1953 elections, only the educated and propertied were allowed to vote and those classes of people had voted in elections before and were therefore experienced voters, except of course the first timers. Up to the 1947 elections such voters voted on issues rather than race as was evidenced with African voters consistently electing Indians such as Debedin, Edun, and Jacob rather than their African opponents. That explained why Indians in 1953 voted for PPP African candidates rather than Indian candidates. With the advent of universal suffrage in 1953 the uneducated masses in the rural and urban areas, especially the sugar estates and the depressed centres in Georgetown voted for the first time and it was those voters who gave the PPP victory.
In 1953 the educated and propertied classes were suspicious of the PPP’s communist rhetoric and voted for the conservative candidates who received 49% of the votes cast. Almost 30% of the registered voters stayed home. It meant that Burnham and Jagan had failed to rally the entire country to their cause. It is instructive to learn how they won over the uneducated voters because that set the stage for the political unrest that would begin to unfold in 1955. Dr Mohan Ragbeer, who knew all the main political actors and usually kept notes for them, in his recently published book, “The Indelible Red Stain,” recorded the manner in which Jagan secured the rural Indian votes and Burnham those of the urban depressed.
Dr Ragbeer in 1961 at his sister Hardai’s house where Jagan had gone to collect his monthly donation, had this to say to Jagan, “ ..they say you bamboozle country coolies with words they don’t understand, with your wonderful smile and charm and your white wife; they say you make claims of being the first to do this or say that, when in fact some of the people you blast were the very ones who started to push for self government, and long before you and Burnham came on the scene; in other words with or without you two, self-government and independence would have come about in the fifties. Many believe and Tulla Bunoye used to say that you delayed it, only now you blame everyone else and tell estate people that. You can’t get away with that among sophisticated folks, so you destroy them with words.”
Burnham did not have a white wife to aid his political ambitions but he had oratory skills which he used to befuddle and dazzle the illiterates with words, sometimes wrongly used. Dr Ragbeer wrote, “ Burnham referred to a poor man as a ‘tatterdemalion or caitiff’ rather than tramp or beggar. In one speech he called his listeners ‘faex populi’ and ‘frugres consumer nati.’ He referred to party and union leaders as ‘dramatis personae,’ and to followers as ‘our fellowship or solidarity of men of like minds.’ His opponents were ‘Jacobins,Finians’ and ‘assorted quislings and their puppets.’ He talked of ‘scrimmages’ and ‘casus belli’ and ‘lex talonis.’ He promised his supporters a ‘cornucopia of ingesta and a plethora of ambrosial libation’.” And so Burnham mesmerized and hypnotized his supporters and led them into mob politics against the PPP in the early 1960’s that destroyed the social and moral fabric of our society.
When Burnham was confronted by world renowned historian and scholar Dr Walter Rodney in the 1970’s, his use of Latin phraseology deserted him and he chose to deal with Walter by way of assassination in June 1980. It was the culmination of criminalized politics that Burnahm had initiated in the 1960’s. Those who contend that Burnham had “vision” must explain where was his “vision” when he started mob politics and when he murdered Dr Walter Rodney.
Malcolm Harripaul
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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