Dear Editor,
It is a pity that Mrs Jagan, outstanding figure of long standing and uncertain understanding on the Guyana and world political landscape, chose to use her enormous prestige in her vain effort to put down David Hinds and Frederick Kissoon. If her seniority does not advise against such unfairness, indiscretion and lack of historical generosity, perhaps the indiscretion needs comment.
I have worked politically with both Mrs Jagan and her late and eminent husband, Cheddi Jagan, together, and with one or the other, in the absence of the other from the scene. Younger PPP members who read a lot of invention ought to know that these famous persons are not strange to me. I have to remark, however, that Mrs Jagan has had a fixation with her and her party’s power to ‘build up’ and ‘break’ people and to influence their reputation.
Frederick Kissoon and David Hinds are both younger people, of no social pedigree, no big family. They were both passionate activists and passionate students. Mr Kissoon has spoken of how he brought Dr Jagan to the UG campus in the days of his isolation. David Hinds as a younger man linked himself to the ‘Workers’ Stage,’ a drama group organised by Ms Gail Teixeira, and took part with his rich dramatic talent in cultural activities of the PPP. He did not brush it aside as an alien organisation, but tried to find a part of it that he could relate to. The PPP supporters of whatever part of the country should know that certain non-PPP persons at various times set out to break the isolation of the PPP, because it was poisonous for the young generation. It is interesting that these are the very people who draw Mrs Jagan’s anger. She has a genuine mistrust of people who do not toe the line. She seems to have made peace with the bourgeoisie but sees intellectual workers and peace activists or advocates of non-violence as the new class enemy.
Mr Kissoon has found it necessary to engage in vigorous comment on public affairs, which are at present dominated by the PPP. I gather from Mr Tacuma Ogunseye’s letter, published in SN on September 18, 2008 that Mrs Jagan had also targeted him and his opinions. He had the impression that she saw him as another treason defendant.
When her constituents were in jeopardy, Kissoon and Hinds were among the few outside the PPP that dared to condemn the actions of the East Coast gunmen. Perhaps Mrs Jagan − yet it would surprise me − wanted it left to the Phantom. I hope she has somewhere in writing proved me wrong. Ms Teixeira went farthest in distancing herself from the suspect drug lords and was later promoted to the Office of the President.
I am proposing a political culture in which political figures or former political figures of great age do not write with hostility about younger activists in an attempt, not to examine their supposed ideas, but to discredit them before they carve out a space in the political exchange. It will be rather stuffy, with us only exhaling from our laden tissues into that space.
Mr Frederick Kissoon in responding to Mrs Jagan’s compliments mentions her statements about me to the author of The People’s Progressive Party… an Oral History… I had seen them and read them without disappointment. Mrs Jagan worships “consistency” and is herself consistent in her own inconsistency, and this, I suppose is virtuous, not vicious. I shall deal with my own extremism separately.
For now, I ask Mrs Jagan whether the PPP Minister, the young Minister Lall, is an extremist, and whether she herself is or has ever been an extremist.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
