Last week, I came upon the prime minister’s 2014 Cheddi Jagan Lecture “Dr Cheddi Jagan’s commitment to National Unity and National Development” (Office of the Prime Minister, April 2014) and immediately felt depressed. It was providential that Marxist/Leninist-orientated Ralph Ramkarran was on hand to distract me from the debilitating doctrine that the PM claimed he helped to inspire. Listen to Ralph.
“Now, once again, Guyana is on the cusp of profound political developments of such an historic nature that they will transform our nation and its role in the region and the world. …. This, of course will never be admitted, unless the next attempt …. [by the PPP] …. to obtain an absolute majority at new elections is unsuccessful. If so, there is no doubt that our current leadership possesses the experience, will and statesmanship to guide the difficult process of reconciling enormous differences. Dogged insistence on minority rule a second time around will only temporarily postpone the inevitable” (“The promise of 1950:” SN: 25/05/2014).
Having been driven into depression by the PM, to hear from Ralph that “our current leadership possesses the experience, will and statesmanship” to guide us through the necessary transformation almost made me inconsolable. But then there it was: that redeeming feature of Marxism/Leninism that has contributed so much to making it attractive to oppressed and disillusioned souls. And so I found much solace in Ralph’s prediction that, matters not what the PPP does, a positive outcome is “inevitable”!
I need two articles to try to explicate what I perceive as the PM’s cognitive delusion (tautological perhaps, but the severity of the condition requires this construction)! In this, I will present the PM’s chronicle of Cheddi’s efforts at building national unity.
Giving a lecture dedicated to the late president, the PM rightly littered his comments with praise, and given the focus of his presentation, he provided us with the standard PPP account of Jagan’s life-long quest for national unity.
Please note; I am only marginally concerned with the various inconsistencies found in and the historical validity of his presentation. I simply want to clearly indicate what Sam understood Cheddi Jagan to have done in his desire to build national unity, and in this context to later consider how he could possibly have derived any historical linkages from them to his preposterous prescriptions.
The PM told us that just three years after his return to Guyana, Cheddi set upon bringing the pieces of our society together, and with Janet, Jocelyn Hubbard and Ashton Chase founded the Political Affairs Committee in 1946.
In a similar fashion, four years later, together with people from all parts of Guyana that were prepared to co-operate with him, Jagan spearheaded the formation of the PPP, with Forbes Burnham having been “roped in a few months earlier and provided with the post of Chairman.” But starting with small issues, disunity in the ranks of the party soon became more substantial, ending in a split in 1955. Cheddi, the PM claimed, offered many compromises along the way to build Guyanese national unity and “return to the spirit of 1953”.
For example, when the economy of Guyana was in trouble in the mid 1970s, despite Burnham’s repeated rigging of elections, Jagan “offered critical support to the PNC Government and proposed a National Patriotic Front Government.” Further, notwithstanding the numerous calumnies of the PNC against him, in the “talks with the WPA, Cheddi maintained that a political solution had to include the PNC – the WPA, at that time, refused to consider involvement of the PNC.” Indeed, it appears, the PM claimed, that for the sake of national unity Cheddi was prepared to compromise with Burnham just before the latter died.
After Desmond Hoyte came to office in another rigged election in 1985, Cheddi worked seriously within the Patriotic Coalition for Democracy (PCD), a group of political parties working for the restoration of democracy.
As it turned out, little came of this approach because, according to the PM, the PCD “could not then come to terms with Cheddi returning as President, ….. and to the PPP having a major role: a position that would now be considered by most as unrealistic and impractical.”
This setback did not damper Cheddi’s commitment to national unity and he recognised the need for new, bold and courageous alternatives to bring our people together. Thus, shortly before the 1992 elections, Cheddi formed the Civic with a range of individuals from all walks of life who were ready to work with him and the PPP.
The highly practical and political nature of Jagan’s approach is contained in the following story told by the PM, but as we shall see, 48 years after independence, he appears not yet to have grasped the concreteness of Jagan’s pragmatism. Please do not allow the attempted picturesque categorizations of the PM to detain you, for in my opinion, they only transmit his essential gratefulness to the PPP for choosing him as its prime ministerial candidate.
“I recall how elated Cheddi was, when Jeffrey Fraser, son of the Honourable WOR Fraser of the post-1953 Interim Government, accepted to be put on our national slate of candidates. As Jeffrey Fraser proffered, there would have been a time when Cheddi and his father might not have seen a good bone in each other. One could see prodigal sons and daughters among the group of Civics, and also ‘outside pickney’ who had not declared their paternity.”
Jagan came to office in 1992 but his ardor for building national unity remained undiminished. The PM remembered how one Saturday, early in 1997, two or three weekends before he fell ill – no doubt with elections also in mind, Cheddi invited an even wider group of persons to join the Civic.
“Cheddi’s death”, the PM claimed, “was indeed untimely, with neither his work for National Unity nor his pursuit of National Development, done.”
So, how does the PM suggest we now proceed with the work of nation building? I shall next juxtapose the concrete efforts the PM told us the late Dr. Cheddi Jagan made against the PM’s own inconsequential offerings, and suggest that the PM’s recommendations merely reflect the positional compromise of the powerless.
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
