In the midst of that “storm in a calabash” your Eyewitness described yesterday, in stepped an oldster from the Burnham “glory days” – Sir Sridath “Sonny” Ramphal. He dismissed it as a “profanity”!! Now while your Eyewitness might be derided as a rank outsider and johnny come lately, it’ll be near impossible to do the same to Ramphal. After all, he was there in lockstep with Burnham, burnishing the latter’s foreign policy credentials to give him the respect he craved so desperately!! At home he was mocked by Rodney – who DID have international street cred – as “King Kong”!!
So, Ramphal sees the present calls for the PPP Government to be removed “by any means necessary” – including by the armed forces being exhorted to “turn their guns” on them and have them crumble like a sandcastle – as an abomination!! And didn’t see it necessary to go beyond that curt dismissal. And no surprise!! As Secretary General of the Commonwealth from 1975 to 1990 he saw numerous wannabe coupsters fall into the dustbins of history. He obviously sees – like your Eyewitness – no threats from that direction. Just a bunch of geriatrics desperately seeking attention before they too fade away!!
No…what Sir Sridath was concerned about was the cynical use of the race card being used to divide the Guyanese people once again. He cited a call from another of his generation who’d supported Burnham but now saw the light!! They saw the futility – and the danger – of blowing that particular dog whistle!! Ramphal reminded us of the 1951 Waddington Commission that had proposed a new constitution for our country – one that finally gave us the universal franchise. One man, one vote – and none of those discriminatory hurdles that had politically silenced the largest group in the colony – Indian Guyanese!!
Ramphal pointed out that as far back as then – just as Burnham and Jagan were emerging – “race” was already seen as a danger to the body politic. Said the Commission, according to Ramphal: ‘race is a patent difference and a powerful slogan ready to the hand of unscrupulous men who can use it as a stepping stone to political power’. In rejecting communal rolls as in some other colonies for different ethnic groups, Ramphal complimented the Commission as promoting “oneness”.
It’s a rather curious quote since Burnham would split the newly-launched multi-racial PPP into African and Indian sections a mere four years later. And he Ramphal would be one of the most prominent facilitators of Burnham’s racial excesses. In now supporting the PPP’s call for “One Guyana”, Ramphal clearly is offering a mea culpa and sending a message to the geriatrics not to try repeating our tragic history.
As we’re seeing, this time it’ll be a “farce”!!
…in anger
“Look back in anger” was the 1950s play – then movie – that introduced the trope of the “angry young man” into modern, post-WWII sensibilities. Here in Guyana, Cheddi Jagan epitomised that “angry young man” – as anyone who peruses his speeches in the Legislature between 1947 and 1951 would see. Imagine he was just 29 when he broke so many barriers as a young “coolie boy” from deep Berbice to shake up the establishment!!
And not just the local establishment – where King Sugar still ruled more than 100 years after the abolition of slavery – but all the way to Whitehall at the centre of the British Empire. When those tout Burnham as the “father of the nation”, they diss the pioneering role Cheddi played to break out of the “reformist” politics practiced up to then! After Cheddi, no one could go back to looking for pats on the head from the local Governor.
Cheddi’s the grandaddy of Guyanese radical politics!! He was our original “angry young man”!!
…in sorrow
Your Eyewitness is deeply saddened how some rabble rousers are confusing the African-Guyanese constituency. Rather than leading them into the brave new world of oil-fuelled economic prosperity, they’re locked into a zero-sum politics. It’s a “shad, shad situation”!!