Desmond Hoyte was one of the best leaders of the post-colonial world. Part 1

I hereby make public a statement I made to Christopher Ram in a private conversation on Monday. I am not at liberty to discuss Chris’ input. As a commentator, political activist and an academic, I need to put in print my revisionist thoughts on the controversy of rigged elections which remains the most deadly accusation made against Forbes Burnham by generations of PPP supporters.

I told Chris that I think Burnham’s rigging of election could carry an argument of justification. Let me point out that no PPP leader from the fifties until now has condemned the absence of the general election process in Cuba. The late anti-imperialist Caribbean scholar, Norman Girvan, remained to his death, a fanatical supporter of the Cuban political system.
I would like to see a scholarly debate in which the question is posed – can Castro be excused for not having the general election in his country but Burnham could be condemned for rigging the same type of election in Guyana?
The national election in a multi-racial population (the term used here to include tribe in the African context) where the winner takes monopolistic power is a scientific fault line.

It explains bitter tragedies in Africa, particularly Zimbabwe, Fiji and Guyana. It explains why Quebec wanted to leave the Canadian federation; why Scotland may leave the United Kingdom of Great Britain and why Catalonia wants no longer to be part of Spain.
Countries like Britain, India, Spain and Ireland are very old societies and over the centuries values, mores, and institutions have evolved to suppress instincts and temperaments that conflict with the spirit of the DEMOS (concept from the ancient Greek city-state that means “community” of people living in harmony).

In very new born polities, these instincts take on immense measures of insecurity when power is unequally distributed in demographic zones where culture and race have overarching importance. We come to Burnham.
I do not agree with all, not most but all, the admirers of Forbes Burnham who see him as a political strategist par excellence. Burnham was a failed political thinker and Guyana could have survived if he was a brilliant political cartographer. Both David Granger, in a newspaper interview, and Norman McLean (at the Rodney Commission) have publicly admitted that Walter Rodney had seriously penetrated the power base of Burnham.
Look at the persons that admitted that Burnham’s rampart was encroached upon by Rodney – David Granger and Normal McLean— two of the most important military persons in the Burnhamite state in the seventies.
Just eight years after achieving Independence, Burnham’s radical enemy had undermined his hold on power, then how can the analyst describe such a leader as being great? Burnham was brilliant in doing away with one person, one vote because such an electoral approach would have devastated the African Guyanese population. But power-sharing had to be the alternative, not the monopoly of power.

Once he did away with the national election or rigged it, there was no alternative but to include the other demographic half that felt it was entitled to power. Burnham did away with the national election but also did away with the legitimate demands of the DEMOS. There were no DEMOS anymore but an authoritarian state.

If Burnham felt that he had to save the African Guyanese people from the scientific fault line by the dissolution of the general election (a position I think can be supported by political theory), then it was only natural for other ethnic communities to feel threatened. And they did felt threatened. The East Indians did not want compulsory national elections and banning of certain types of foods. All Burnham had to do was to accept the way they felt. Most self-destructively, he did not.

Of course there were mountains that stood in his way – Jagan would not have allowed for a democratic Burnhamite state even if Burnham had created oceans of generosity to Indian people. Jagan would not have accepted democracy from Burnham. He wanted to be part of the state machinery and that demand was logical within the context of the DEMOS. But Burnham did not try that.
He never even attempted it before 1985. When he did, he died months later.

In an ethnically divided society Burnham knew the concept of a general election was a Westminster danger. But Burnham offered no alternative even though from 1968 he had monopolistic power. To sum up this first part then, one can argue that Burnham was sagacious in understanding the evil a national election brings to a multi-racial polity. But his rule further aggravated the ethnic impulses in a multi-racial country.
It was left to Desmond Hoyte to undo the damage Burnham did. Tragically by then it was too late.