Guyanese Online

By Ralph Ramkarran – December 4, 2022 – Conversation Tree Blog

On September 27, 1965, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) delivered a 1965-page report into Rac ial Problems in the Public Service of British Guiana. By letter dated April 6, 1965, Prime Minister Burnham, in his invitation, said to the ICJ that his Government had been “deeply concerned with the need to remove from our society sources of racial disharmony and to promote the right of each individual, whatever his ethnic origin, to have an equal opportunity to play a meaningful part in the community.”

He said that his Government’s concern had been to “determine whether such [racial] imbalance as may exist in any particular field can be corrected and, if so, what is the shortest practicable period for such correction.” Burnham may well have been pressured by the UK to invite the ICJ having regard to searing ethnic strife of the early 1960s and the perceived undermining of Indian political representation by the imposition of proportional representation to defeat the PPP.            Continue reading →