One day after Dr Cheddi ‘Joey’ Jagan endorsed the APNU+AFC coalition, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) released a letter it said was written by his late mother, former president Janet Jagan, in which, among other things, she said he had humiliated his late father, Dr Cheddi Jagan.
According to the letter, released as an advertisement, just before she died Janet Jagan had asked a close associate to release the letter to “show the public how her own son disrespected & betrayed his parents and the PPP/C, even when they were alive.”
Janet Jagan died in March 2009, more than 5 years ago and this is the first time the letter has been made public. Its publication came on the heels of Joey Jagan’s endorsement of the coalition.
The letter, which is handwritten and difficult to decipher, speaks, among other things, about Joey Jagan’s “attitude to his mother”, about him expressing “his lies” and the fact that he had “humiliated Cheddi.” All three of these sections were highlighted in the advertisement.
While Joey Jagan has endorsed the coalition he is not a candidate on its electoral list. However, in 2011, he was on the PPP/C’s list and there was no mention of any letter written by his mother then.
On Monday Dr Jagan Jnr in endorsing the PPP/C said, “I am appealing to all voters out there to throw aside the prejudices, throw aside your blind loyalty to people who cannot help you anymore. After 23 years of rule it is time for a change.”
Meanwhile, one day after he endorsed the coalition, his sister, Nadira Jagan-Brancier, in a brief letter to this newspaper, made it clear that she does not support the coalition dispelling what she described as “rumours that the children of Cheddi and Janet Jagan are supporting the APNU+AFC Coalition.
“I am writing to let it be known that I support the People’s Progressive Party/Civic in the upcoming elections on May 11, 2015 and urge everyone to go out and vote early on that day for the Cup,” she said in the letter.
Her support comes even as she has had issues with some in the ruling party about their ostentatious lifestyle unlike that which was led by her parents.
At a March 10 press conference, former president Bharrat Jagdeo had defended his palatial home and contentious presidential benefits package. “I don’t believe ministers should have to live in a logie to prove that they are not corrupt… Cheddi Jagan didn’t have to prove that by living in a logie,” Jagdeo had said, when asked if he believed that his posh home and the rapid accumulation of wealth by ministers in the PPP/C would be within the late president’s ideals.
Jagan-Brancier was forced to respond to these comments.
“I am extremely disappointed that Bharrat Jagdeo would try to compare his lifestyle to that of my parents, former presidents Dr Cheddi Jagan and Mrs Janet Jagan, and defend his opulent lifestyle by pathetically claiming that my parents also lived in a large house in an affluent community. Nothing could be further from the truth,” she had written in a letter.
Earlier, on March 28, 2012 at Babu John during a remembrance service for her late mother a visibly emotional Jagan-Brancier, who was almost in tears at the end of her short speech, had urged those who were gathered to visit her parent’s Bel Air house which is now a heritage site and is open to the public, to see how humbly they lived compared to how government officials live at present.
“I really encourage people to go in Bel Air and see the house where they lived because they lived a very simple life; they didn’t have a big ostentatious house that you see nowadays with government officials, party officials, which is a very sad thing, I think personally,” she had said at the time.
She had further stated that the party puts out a platform that says, “Cheddi Jagan our living guide,” but that it is not enough to “go out there and say lovely speeches about who my parents were, what they did and the legacy that we are carrying on.
“To me the most important point [is that]… my parents had very, very, very high moral…standards [and] this I find is very lacking in many of the leaders. My parents… [were] probably the most incorruptible people you would ever find; their honesty and integrity were of very high standards that unfortunately do not exist, or I don’t see it in many of the leaders of the party and of the government,” Jagan-Brancier had said to loud applause.
