Sigmund Freud was the most important signpost in Guyana in 2020
Kaieteur News- If you are not qualified in the humanities and social sciences and have no interest in Guyana politics and sociology, then I still claim that once you live and work here and will do so for years to come you are reading an excellent analysis of why the UK left the European Union by a British historian just as right.
Entitled “How Delusions About World War II Fed Brexit Mania” by Max Hastings (Bloomberg.com/opinion, “January 3, 2021), the article is a Freudian analysis of what lay deep in the collective thinking of the British people, in particular, the upper classes and emerged with the Brexit campaign. When you digest that interpretation, then try to transport what Hastings said about the British people to Guyana’s middle class Africa and sections of African Guyanese in general.
Election rigging for five consecutive months in 2020 revealed what has always been in the mind of the African-dominated PNC, and African Guyanese – the government should always be in the hands of Black leadership. This was Forbes Burnham’s expanding obsession. But Burnham went further.
Africa’s traditional intellectual class and significant amounts of Afro-Guyanese believed in the power binary – a government for the All Blacks, a business for Indians. Burnham tried with great success to eliminate this binary. He implemented extravagant controls on Guyana’s resources severely weakening the private capitalist cycles that incapacitated Portuguese Guyanese trade and Indian businesses
Halim Majeed, a former Burnham adviser, wrote a small book entitled, “Forbes Burnham: National Reconciliation and National Unity, 1984-1985,” in which he applauded Burnham for Burnham’s overtures to Jagan Gardens in 1984. Majeed is either deliberately propagating or naïve or intellectually incapable of analyzing the essence of Burnham’s character. By 1984, Burnham had gone too far in the direction of narcissism, royalty status and maniacal obsessions to truly share power (see my review of Majeed’s book in KN of December 9, 2005; “A foolish but interesting little book. Collection – The Guyanese Pinocchio ”)
Out of power since 1992, the opportunity came to re-enact Burnham’s assertion of Guyana in 2015. Not ready to tie power and challenge it again when election time came, African political and intellectual groups decided that the configurations of Guyana and Burnham designed in 1968 it should be reclaimed – the All Blacks government, capitalism for Indians.
But 2020 wasn’t 1968. 2020 wasn’t 2020. Those in the past were long gone. In trying to bring back the seventies and eighties, parts of Africa’s Guyanese population nearly destroyed the entire territory. Guyana was reduced to a literal joke in the eyes of the world. But it was not mild facetiousness. It was a dangerous circus.
I suggest you listen to the final program of the year of “Wake Up Guyana” on Kaieteur Radio played on the 31st where I was a guest alongside three young journalists – Kemol King, Shikema Dey and Mikaila Prince. The latter two mentioned the attacks on them outside GECOM Head Office. They were so scared that they went back to their offices and cried. King said 2020 was a rude awakening to him about what Guyanese politicians were like. He sang out, Aubrey Norton. For all three of these young journalists, the year 2020 will forever be etched in their minds.
The most accurate way to put it is that 2020 will be permanently stamped on the walls of the minds of all of us. It will take a ton of columns to assess 2020 because tons of unforeseen expense occurred and not only in Guyanese eyesight but in the eyes of the world at large.
Can the 18-year-olds forget 2020 in their homeland? I doubt that very much. They were too young to remember anything similar as to what happened on that fateful day on Wednesday March 4 when Mingo openly began rigging the elections. But not only will the young generation remember 2020 forever but also the AFC leaders who are now devoted to oblivion. As they grow older and disappear completely, they will look back on 2020 as their nemesis.
Finally, the PNC youth leaders will be aging and will have no power in the near future. Speaking to their children in 2030 why the PNC does not look likely to form government, 2020 will come to light. If they are honest with their children, they will tell them that 2020 was the year in which the PNC destroyed itself as silly and unnecessary. Guyana belongs to them in general and to all other racial groups as well.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.)