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Oct 05, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Kaieteur News – There is cybercrime legislation. The Police investigate and charge people making inflammatory statements on social media. There have been two suspicious fires – one at a school in the interior, the other, Brickdam Police station. There was a fire at the Vigilance Police station.
In these unsettling times, free speech cannot be used as the licence to preach dangerous sermons. In a recent Facebook programme of David Hinds dedicated to remembering the so-called greatness of Forbes Burnham, Henry Jeffrey made a dangerously disturbing statement for which there should be a police investigation.
If based on this column that item is taken down then the police should demand that Hinds produce it. Of course, Hinds lives in the US so the US authorities ought to be contacted by the Guyanese Police. Jeffrey was a former Minister in the PPP Government for 14 consecutive years. He argued that in Guyana you have two strong ethnic sides so there must be dialogue and negotiations.
In today’s Guyana, he continued, the PPP can do whatever it wants. It does not want to talk but to do what Israel has done – gone to war against the subtle attempt to raise Macbeth’s witches – so they can restart mo fyaah/slo fyaah. This is fanning the flames. This is my opinion.
The other guests were Hamilton Green, a faded, disappeared, dictator of yesteryear and Vincent Alexander. Let us leave Green out of the equation. He is not worth being discussed – period! The importance of that programme lies in the way David Hinds, one of the leaders of the WPA and self-styled Rodneyite gloated over Burnham. What Alexander had to say was essentially comical. More of that in another column on Burnham sometime in the future.
Hinds hosts his shows against a backdrop of a large photo of Walter Rodney. Let us rewind the tape to the Walter Rodney Commission of Enquiry. The following witnesses from the WPA testified – Dr. Omawale, Eusi Kwayana, Tacuma Ogunseye, Karen DeSouza, Reuben Gilbert and Dr. Nigel Westmaas. For the Rodney family, Walter Rodney’s wife, Patricia, and brother, Donald, testified. Each witness painted a terrifying portrait of a dictatorship under President Burnham. Dr. Omawale’s statement accused the presidency of Burnham of being a murderous regime.
The Report of the Walter Rodney Commission is available online. It makes for chilling reading. The Report concluded that President Burnham was directly involved in the assassination of the great Historian. Waxing lyrical about Burnham’s greatness, against a large photo of Rodney, Hinds outflow makes your skin crawl in the context of Rodney’s death.
Those who are interested in seeing the level that prominent Guyanese have descended to, as a lesson of what life holds, should see the video. Henry Jeffrey explicitly stated that Burnham was the only head of government who tried to bring about racial conciliation.
When Jeffrey said that I thought my memory had failed me. I lived under Burnham and he literally ran Guyanese Indians out of their own country. If you have to guess a percentage of the Indian population that deeply hated Burnham in the year 1985, months before his justified death, I would put it at 99.99 percent. Such a leader was incapable of bringing about racial harmony.
I would like to quote from an email that a Guyanese Professor, who is a friend at UWI in Jamaica, sent me on the last day of December, 2012. Here is what Linguistics Professor, Hubert Devonish, wrote: “The Burnham regime was oppressive and carrying Guyana nowhere, and all efforts should have been made, as they were by Walter and others, to remove it from office.” Dr. Devonish has no relation with the PPP and never had.
In everyone’s life, there are moments they will never ever forget despite old age even if they reach 100. I was in the John F. Kennedy Library when I heard the announcement of Burnham’s demise. I say in all honesty, that was one of the most elated moments in my life.
My feeling, which is strong, is that if Burnham did not kill Rodney, he would have been removed by Walter. I think it would have gone the way of Rumania. As the Rumanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, saw the protests and demonstrations getting bigger he resorted to shooting down people.
Once Rodney had managed to sustain days of volcanic protests, Burnham would have done like Ceausescu. Burnham and his sidekick (the little dictator who is still alive) would have gunned down protestors. Like in Rumania, it would have turned deadly, making Burnham’s removal a matter of days. I believe Rodney would have tried Burnham and have him executed. Burnham would have deserved that.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
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