Burnham’s dream of self-sufficiency ended in insufficiency

Aug 27, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

(Kaieteur News) – There is a particular species of political nostalgia that thrives in countries with short memories. It takes yesterday’s failures, dusts them with the language of national purpose, places them beneath a portrait of the departed leader and calls the result a vision.

This is what is happening today when we are invited to believe that Forbes Burnham’s dream of a self-sufficient Guyana is still being built. It is as though the intervening decades since his death were merely an unfortunate interruption in an otherwise triumphant national project.