PNC Kool-Aid drinkers have no moral grounds on which to criticize the PPP/C
Dear Editor,
“Show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are” is an old saying which means: You can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep.
Mark Archer, Robert Corbin and David Granger are no exception. Their long association with the People’s National Congress -PNC Party, and especially its founding leader Forbes Burnham, has left them with no moral grounds on which to criticize the PPP/C Administration of corruption or misuse of public funds.
In his letter “Let’s sweep them out” (KN, Sept. 10) Mark Archer refers to a Wikileaks report originating from the US Embassy that suggests the PPP/C Administration is “a government, tightening control and misusing the rule of law”.
It is obvious that Mark Archer has never read the US Government’s position on the PNC when Burnham reigned supreme. And if he has, he is counting on the older voters to forget the corrupted, repressive and tyrannic regime we once lived under, and hopes to convince our youth that David Granger is the ‘chosen one’ to rescue Guyana from the ‘evil’ PPP/C.
Old declassified documents from the US State Department (http://www.guyana.org/govt/declassified_ documents_1969_1976.html) disclosed how former Prime Minister Forbes Burnham siphoned off “something better than $28,000(US) annually (through a holding company controlled by the PNC: Greenland Investment Company-GLICO) from sales from a flour mill to finance his political activities.”
And in the last six months of 1969, the PNC siphoned off US$40,000 from the sale of flour through GLICO. The US feared that robbing the treasury to strengthen the PNC Party will “sooner or later become public knowledge and will be damaging to Burnham’s position.”
In February 1969 “Prime Minister Forbes Burnham of Guyana, who has previously received covert assistance from CIA, requested that the Agency provide $10,000(US) a month for two years to support his efforts to build his party, the People’s National Congress (PNC), into an effective, permanently organized political party. Ambassador Delmar Carlson [text not declassified] recommend approval of this request in the amount of $5,000(US) per month for two years.” In 1969, the exchange rate was US$1.00 = G$2.00. Ten Thousand US$ today would be the equivalent to G$2 Million.
“In the 1968 elections the PNC used its control of the government to pad (rig) the electoral rolls and win a slim majority of the vote.
The official results gave the PNC 30 seats in the legislative assembly, the People’s Progressive Party (Jagan’s party) 19 seats and the UF 4 seats. Leaders of the PPP and the UF attacked the elections as being dishonest, but their charges had little effect in Guyana and stirred almost no interest abroad.”
The US Government was also aware that the PNC was likely to rig the next general election due by 1974. One cable in part reads, “The outcome of the next election (which must be held no later than March 1974) would not be in real doubt; Burnham will win, if necessary by rigging the election. Our purpose in providing support would be to help make the voting result look more plausible through funding a sufficient level of pre-election organizational activity by Burnham’s party to lend credence to the victory.”
Indeed, this was the same election, held on July 16, 1973, in which the PNC gave themselves a two thirds majority in Parliament, by ordering the seizure of ballot boxes by the GDF.
So if the PNC believes there is corruption in the Jagdeo Administration, it is only because a thief is always suspicious of someone else being (you guessed it)… a thief.
Harry Gill
