Dear Editor,
I am open to the interpretation by Mr W Moore ( ‘History… stumbles along the trail of the past,’ SN May 20) that what Mrs Jagan could have simply meant in her telegram to her parents in 1953 was that Cheddi won his seat, Janet won her seat and the party won an overwhelming victory. If that was the case, indeed it is laughable that we are trying to impute other motives or explanations. We can never be sure what she meant to convey, and can only properly interpret in the context in which the event took place. What we can be sure of was it was a proud moment for her and she wanted to share this pride with her parents. I do agree with Churchill on the flickering lamps aspect of reconstructing history as this truly reflects the coloured lenses that we wear when we interpret text and events. That was the point of my earlier letter. I did not set out to praise Mrs Jagan as another letter writer sought to claim. Rather, I questioned whether her legacy could be properly analysed using selective, context-less events with grave omissions, to give rise to what seems to be a preconceived image of the woman. As one blogger on the SN website aptly said, we only expose ourselves to the information which reinforces our perceptions and beliefs.
That is, we analyse with a frame of reference to give credence to an earlier belief and not with an open mind. Simply put, if we believe a man is guilty, we simply seek the evidence to prove him guilty, glossing over all the other evidence to the contrary.
I could not care less whether a proper and objective reconstruction of history makes Mrs Jagan Machiavelli. At least, it would be an objective account not suffering selection bias on the part of the writer and his/her frame of reference. Such objectivity would remove concerns that the analyses offered are merely the crutches of someone’s earlier convictions. As I said earlier, the piece in the Guyana Review, gives the impression of being objective, mixing in facts with the selective treatment of history to give rise to a calculating woman whose legacy was a stable but anachronistic PPP. Major aspects of the article not dealt with objectively include the split of the PPP, the 1964 violence and Mrs Jagan’s role and ethnic violence in Guyana. If I had not known better after reading that article, I would have been convinced that ethnic violence in Guyana started with the PPP sugar strike. If an accurate account of our political history makes Mrs Jagan a dark figure, so be it. This will not whittle away the respect I have for her for her struggles for political freedom for Guyana. It is the same respect I have for Mr Hoyte for sanctioning a chain of events that allowed democracy to be restored to Guyana. I do not have to agree with everything they did to respect them for key actions on their part with great consequences.
Yours faithfully,
Gitanjali Persaud
