Entschuldigen! Sie wassen wer Forbes Burnham war?

Those words are German and it means; "Excuse me, do you know who Forbes Burnham was?" I chose German because of the Adolf Hitler context. Hitler literally destroyed Germany during the first half of the 20th century. In the seventies onwards, German political parties had no time to use Hitler in their political campaigns. He was long dead. No one mentions Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany in election campaigns. The simple fact is young Germans have faint knowledge of Hitler and don’t want to know about his government. Go to any websites and look back at American election battles in the eighties and nineties; no one mentions Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal when he was toppled in 1975. In Guyana, President Burnham’s reign was from 1964 to 1985. It is forty-nine years since Burnham came to power. If the census shows that about seventy-five percent of our population is under thirty-five years of age, then more than eighty percent of our population has no familiarity with the details of the epoch of Forbes Burnham. Parents of all people would know this. My daughter was born as Desmond Hoyte was about to end his presidency. She has no recollection of the reign of Forbes Burnham; so do all her friends. One wonders, then, what the PPP hopes to achieve by preaching to a nation, a majority of whom do not know who Forbes Burnham was. You are curious to know what makes the PPP stick with this macabre and silly bandwagon of consistently going back to the presidency of Forbes Burnham, an era that is long gone— almost four decades ago. The latest expedition in this morbid journey was done by President Ramotar last Monday at Albion in his address at an Arrival Day event. I have done the research since I read what Ramotar told his Albion audience. The facts show that ninety percent of speeches by PPP leaders at any public gathering go way back into history at a time when their listeners were nowhere on the face of the earth and haven’t a clue what the speakers are saying. Just before Ramotar’s outpouring, last Monday, there was Jagdeo two weeks ago at the funeral service of Reepu Daman Persaud telling the mourners about the days when East Indians were discriminated against. Jagdeo must have slipped up in omitting to mention that the white man did a lot of injustice to Indians when he invaded India. Jagdeo forgot to mention that the white man partitioned India and created Pakistan For this article, I went back and looked at the PPP speeches during the election campaign in 2011. The pattern was clear – Burnham’s Government was the rallying point. Clement Rohee was the most consistent user of this ancient bandwagon. It is clear to the researcher that PPP leaders have an obsession with fulminating against the Burnham period. The question is why, given its total uselessness. When you tell a person about a natural disaster that claimed untold lives a hundred years ago, it does not create the same emotional laceration as when it happened during the lifetime of the person. The person’s emotion is aroused because he saw what happened, felt what happened and suffered losses either near, not so far, or even distant. The person could relate to what you are telling him because he knows what you are talking about. The PPP cannot arouse young Indians with raging denunciations of the Burnham Government, because young people are not interested. These jumbie stories about Burnham mean nothing to them. They do not emotionally stir them. So why persist? Three reasons explain this platform. First, the PPP is trapped in the past. It lives in the past. For PPP leaders, young and old, Guyana’s ontology is a fight to the death between the PPP and the PNC. Secondly, it is sociological stupidity. PPP leaders do not understand that young Indians today love Rihanna more than many Indian movie stars. Young Indians listen to Jay-Z. Thirdly, it is instinctive for PPP leaders to go endlessly for Burnham’s throat because they see a racist profit. The more you criticize the PNC Government, they feel, the more Indian people cling to their racial suspicion. It didn’t work in the last election. It is not working. It will not work in the future. Young Indians don’t know who Burnham was; don’t know about split peas ban, don’t know about flour ban. They only know about Jagdeo. They don’t like him. They laugh at him. They are laughing at Uncle Donald. Can you blame them?