The APNU/AFC coalition seeks to draw some inspiration from the earlier attempt by Cheddi and Janet Jagan to establish a nationalist/socialist-orientated political organisation in the mid/late 1940s. The coming together of Jagan and Forbes Burnham was not an institutional alliance such as the present one, but undoubtedly it had at its root a similar understanding of the ethnic realities of politics in Guyana.
Preparing for a presentation on coalition politics in Guyana to the Rotary Club of Georgetown last week, it struck me that, with a mild stretch, if one is to take the Jagan/Burnham model as a starting place, Guyana’s political landscape is littered with various forms of individuals and groups attempting to work together for the common political end of removing regimes.
We know that as an alliance, the Burnham/Jagan effort failed, and if my story is correct, the purposes for