Fake historical facts in a sixty two year old historiography.

Feb 05, 2018.

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For sixty two years – from the 1955 political split between Jagan and Burnham to the Kaieteur News letter of Friday February 2, 2018 by Sam Hinds – the PPP has gotten away with a convenient historiography that very few scholars in the 21st century have confronted. You wonder if this country has a university that produces social scientists and historians.
The PPP’s presentation of history has been flawed yet understandable. It is a political party that wants to rule the country. So it presents convenient tales of the wrongs it has endured so Guyanese can be sympathetic, embrace it and put it into office. This suspect historiography was bolstered in stupendous ways by the publication of Cheddi Jagan’s emotional and appealing autobiography, “The West on Trial.”
Dr. Jagan’s account was based upon his perception of other humans. If other politicians challenged him, these competitors were either bourgeois folks, American stooges or people with hidden, deceptive agendas. It is for academics to leave corrections for future generations. Those future generations are entitled to know real facts that went on sixty, seventy years ago and not bogus stories.
There are real humans of Guyanese nationality of Indian ethnicity living in this world that are highly educated and could be found in important jobs in important countries who would tell you with emotional energy and deep convictions that; (1) Burnham engineered the split in the united PPP in 1955, (2), the PNC was taking bombs to Wismar when the Sun Chapman blew up, (3) the PNC and the West overthrew the PPP Government in the sixties, (4) the PNC planned the arson of the home of Premier Jagan’s Permanent Secretary in 1964 which took the life of the man and six of his children, (5) the PNC attempted to kill the editor of the daily Evening Post in 1964 and blame it on the PPP, (6) the PNC government framed Arnold Rampersaud for killing a police guard and shooting another at the Corentyne toll station in 1974, (6) it was PNC propaganda that the PPP torched many sugar estates while the PNC was in power, (7) President Desmond Hoyte was no democratic president.
This is just a very short enumeration of fake historical facts that the PPP has been putting out there. We will just comment on one of them. The blowing up of the Sun Chapman appeared to have been a vendetta act to revenge the death, rape and violent assault against Indians during the disturbances in the sixties.
Finally this fake historiography has one recurring theme. It is a theme that future generations of PPP leaders and activists will hold on to for dear life – the modern history of Guyana was the zero sum struggle between the good guy, Cheddi Jagan and the bad guy, Forbes Burnham.
Tragically enough, twenty-three years of abominable rule of the PPP from 1992 to May 2015 in which democratic violations and sickening corruption occurred on a colossal scale never seen before in the CARICOM region are glossed over by these very educated humans, some of whom are newspaper columnists and educators in foreign universities. We come now to the evidence of this continuation of fake historical facts by the PPP.
Doesn’t one find it strange that whenever there are accusations of ethnic discrimination when the PPP was in office from 1992 to April 2015 in the letter sections of the daily newspapers, the replies from the PPP come from an African Guyanese, Sam Hinds? Mr. Hinds was at it again last Friday in this newspaper. He was giving his reaction to the COI on the crime wave. The trained mind cannot miss the fake facts machine at work.
Mr. Hinds says that the 1997 election was won by the PPP but PNC asserted that it was rigged. Does the PNC have a monopoly on the claim of rigged elections? General Secretary and President elect, Donald Ramotar, said days after the election results that the 2011 poll was rigged. Bharrat Jagdeo said days after the election results that the 2015 poll was fraudulent and the PPP will not recognize the APNU+AFC administration.
Mr. Hinds stated in that letter that the crime wave of 2002-2006 had its genesis in ethnic resentment. Here we see the memory of convenience coming in. By the time the PPP won the 1997 elections, the public sector had witnessed what could only be described as whole-scale dismissal of public servants belonging to the African community.
The numbers totaled in the hundreds. For the documentation on such dismissals, please see my research, “Ethnic Power and Ideological Racism: Comparing presidencies in Guyana.” Play it again Sam!