Dear Editor,
I would like to add my voice to those who have offered condolences on the passing of Janet Jagan. The Guardian in London has recently published an obituary that represented a whitewashing of history, a racist and patronising account that characterised the 1953 British suspension of the constitution as a necessary move to save Guyanese from themselves, who seemed by their actions not politically mature enough or ready for self-rule. Janet Jagan was a key figure in the building of the multi-racial, anti-colonial coalition that swept to power in 1953 and that offered hope to all Guyanese.
A good friend of mine, who was present in Guyana for the funeral, sent me a moving description, but was also puzzled by the relative absence of the Guyana flag, the Golden Arrowhead, along the route, and the fact that it was the banner of the People’s Progressive Party that fluttered and that was an insistent presence throughout the day.
It is not the presence of the latter flag, but the relative absence of the former, that prompts these questions. Since I was not there, perhaps someone else can correct this impression or clarify. For a state funeral, what is the protocol and what is the significance of the flags that mark the occasion? Does the Golden Arrowhead not suggest that the occasion speaks to all of us (the moment best represented in Janet Jagan’s life by the activism leading up to 1953)? Does deliberately choosing to mark a state funeral with a profusion of party flags not represent a partisan sentiment (the split in the anti-colonial struggle that would happen in the mid 1950s, that has produced the racial divide that hangs like an albatross around our necks to the current day)? Is this not party paramountcy, which the PPP in the anti-dictatorial period opposed so strongly? How short are our memories, how sweet the taste of power!
I really do hope my friend was wrong.
Yours faithfully,
Alissa Trotz
