Constitutional reform: Forbes Burnham Part 1
Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham was born on 20th February 1923, helped to form the PPP in 1950, left the PPP in 1955 and formed the People’s National Congress (PNC) in 1958, became premier/prime minister in 1964, president in 1980 and died on 6th August 1985.
Two weeks ago I was invited by the chairperson of the People’s National Congress (PNCR), Ms. Volda Lawrence, to make a presentation to the Region 4 party leadership on Burnham’s contemporary relevance. I sought to focus my presentation upon my experiences in the PNC and constitutional reform to acquire that elusive level of national unity without which Guyana will not properly prosper.
Last week this column concluded that national unity would be impossible without some substantial consensual governmental understanding and the positive national narrative that could flow therefrom. It then occurred to me that although not absolutely necessary, one of the major difficulties with developing such a narrative would be finding a consensus on the place of Forbes Burnham within such a story. In some quarters Burnham is viewed as a hero but for others he is the archetypical racist and undemocratic opportunist. Why not then shift my presentation, eschew the decades of propaganda and focusing upon Burnham take the opportunity to begin a narrative with the following brief and relevant if somewhat hackneyed, historical backdrop?
In my presentation I argued that the society the PNC inherited exhibited all the characteristics of under-development inherent in its colonial status. Its economy was dominated by the production of three primary products: sugar, bauxite and rice, the first two of which were focused upon the international marketplace while the latter was both a basic staple of the population and a substantial export. The country depended upon external sources for most of what it needed to survive. There was little backward/forward integration in the productive sector (and to this day, after being in sugar production of centuries, Guyana still finds it difficult to produce the required quality of refined sugar for its productive needs). It does not can fish or fruits in any substantial quantity although it is well endowed with fishing and agricultural land resources that are perennially exploited by others. With the exception of rice, the main productive activities were controlled by foreign companies who had a profound influence upon the economic, social and political life of the country. Indeed, the nickname of British Guiana as ‘Bookers Guiana’ suggested this reality.
British Guiana was for the most part in a general state of underdevelopment with poor infrastructure, a paucity of productive capital, inadequate economic and social services and a level of per capita income (1950-56 averaged G$350 per annum) which gave the majority of the population a living standard barely above subsistence level. Between the Second World War and independence, unemployment averaged around 25 per cent of the total labour force. The internal beneficiaries of this underdevelopment were mainly the European colonial elite and their creole collaborators.
By 1950, when the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) was being formed, on the international scene communism and capitalism – West and East - were in a dingdong struggle for world dominance, with the former desperately attempting to ‘contain’ the internationalizing objective of communism. Furthermore, colonialism was unraveling: India gained its independence in 1947, Ghana in 1957, Tanzania in 1961, Guyana in 1966, etc. In this firmament various liberation theories began to flourish: communism/socialism was popular together with negritude, non-alignment, black power, ujamaa socialism, co-operative socialism, etc. One suspects that a few, such as non-alignment, ujamaa and cooperative socialism, were developed to avoid having to take positions that could be construed as ‘communistic.’
Unfortunately for Guyana, very early in the 1950s its nationalist political leadership, more specifically Cheddi Jagan and the PPP, was labeled communist and thus Guyana became embroiled in the international struggle. Normally when substantial local protagonists cannot agree on the constitutional nature of the state it results in lengthy violent confrontations until some acceptable or unavoidable solution is found. That said, in Guyana the internal quarrel was driven by international capital aided by their local allies in business, the trade unions, the churches, the United Force (UF), elements of civil society and later quite opportunistically by the PNC. There were widespread political/ethnic agitations against the PPP that, in the aggression and counter aggression, left about 170 persons dead, millions of dollars in property lost and substantial ethnic internal migration. The colonial administration had been unsuccessfully gerrymandering the electoral system to drive the PPP from government since about 1957. However, success came in 1964 when it unusually and ‘unilaterally,’ imposed proportional representation (PR).
Locally and directly related to the ethnic situation in Guyana, in about 1950 MG Smith, looking at what he deemed ‘plural societies’ was suggesting that once independence became possible there would be a struggle for power between the Indians and Africans. This was largely because ethnic and cultural characteristics had become symbols of political allegiance driving the ethnicities apart. At that time these kinds of theories took years, if not decades, to filter down to practitioners but officialdom in London understood the implications of Smith’s contention. Perhaps Smith also came upon John Stuart Mill, who nearly 100 years before was quite dismissive about the possibility of establishing representative governments in such countries. ‘Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of a different nationalities. … (there) the united public opinion necessary to the working of a representative government cannot exist.’ Furthermore, in 1954, the British Guiana Constitutional Commission in the Robertson Report, considering the hard evidence on the ground stated, ‘We do not altogether share the confidence … that a comprehensive loyalty to British Guiana can be stimulated among peoples of such diverse origins.’
Sir Arthur Lewis was studying the divisive politics in West Africa at about this same period and is considered to be father of shared governance arrangements to deal with the ethnic/political conflicts that inevitably arise in countries such as Guyana. Indeed, the British government was doubtful of the possibilities of Guyana ever being a normal democratic state and thus offered shared governance to the Guyanese leadership similar to what they were proposing at the time in Cyprus, and what in 1998 finally brought an end to the political and armed struggle between the Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. This was rejected by Cheddi Jagan who might have viewed the offer as another effort to remove him from office and this way of keeping the PPP in check might well have been factored into British thinking. However, even if Jagan was correct, in the context of Guyana it would have been the more sensible solution to the ethnic problem; possibly killing two birds with one stone so to speak.
Unsurprisingly, the PNC/UF coalition won the PR elections in 1964 and with the PPP out of the way but clearly not truly grasping the nature of his situation, Forbes Burnham in his address to the nation after the 1964 elections was ebullient. He spoke of there being an ‘apparent’ ethnic cleavage that his party would remove by exposing the dishonesty, deceitfulness, opportunism and racism of PPP (Future Notes, SN: 10/02/2021)! Burnham was something of a socialist who viewed the capitalist orientation of D’Aguiar as a humbug and knew pretty well that the West would not risk the PPP coming to government so he took the opportunity to rid himself of the UF by manipulating the elections of 1968. In 1970, Guyana became a Cooperative Republic with the promise - still waiting to be fulfilled - of ‘making the small man the real man’!