The week before last, Minister of State Joseph Harmon told the National Assembly that the Red House, which was state property, had been leased in 2012 to a private company for 99 years at the ludicrous rate of $1,000 per month. The company, which was called Cheddi Jagan Research Inc, boasted a board of directors which, in Mr Harmon’s words, looked like “the central executive of the PPP.” It included, he said, the names of such people as former president Donald Ramotar; the late president Janet Jagan; Ambassador to Venezuela Geoffrey da Silva; daughter of the Jagans, Nadira Jagan-Brancier; James Rose; Michael Khan; Kellawan Lall; the late Navindra Chandarpal; Mohamed Sattaur; Hydar Ally and A Ramkarran.
Red House is a national heritage building, and in its early days accommodated the colonial secretaries. However, during the period when Dr Cheddi Jagan was premier prior to Independence, it became his home, and it is for this reason the PPP set its eyes on it for the location of the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre opened in the year 2000. It became a repository for records of one kind or another which had been held by the PPP, photocopies of documents covering the 1950s and 1960s, held in the National Archives in Kew, London, as well as books, artefacts and a range of other things. It was also the venue for lectures and seminars relating to Dr Jagan and his party.
Two questions arise, one pertaining to the building per se, and the other to its contents. The structure, which as mentioned above, was a national heritage site, had become run down under the PNC, and the PPP/C either did not have the revenue available in state coffers to repair it, or were unwilling to expend public funds on such an exercise. Eventually money from the Barama Company made possible the restoration and refurbishment of the house, although subsequent maintenance and rehabilitation work on it was carried out entirely at the expense of the state.
When the then government leased the building for a risible sum, Minister Harmon said that the staff employed there were still paid by the state. One might have thought that even the PPP, which was dismissive of legal niceties during its years in government, would have hesitated to turn over a state heritage building to a private company, which from the composition of its board is nothing but a party appendage. But it did exactly that without a qualm, and furthermore, had the effrontery to still expect the taxpayers to foot the bill for the staff. This was doubly problematic, because the Centre itself was in private hands.
The reason for creating Cheddi Jagan Research Inc will be apparent even to someone who knows very little about politics in this country. In the election of 2011 Freedom House received the first intimations that it might not be politically immortal, so to speak, and that it could lose the next election, or if not that one, the one thereafter. The Cheddi Jagan Research Centre contains, as noted above, very much a specialized collection of documents, relating to only one party and reflecting that party’s particular historical perspective. The PPP would have been naturally anxious about what would happen to this collection should the party lose power. It is significant, therefore, that it was in the year after the 2011 election that the building was leased, the idea being presumably, to keep control of the building, in order to place what was deposited there out of the reach of any potentially ‘hostile’ future government.
Last week, former auditor-general, Anand Goolsarran expressed the view that the lease should be revoked, although Minister Harmon would not be drawn on whether a reversal would be possible. He did say, however, that the matter would be addressed once the budget is finished and went on to comment that, “It might be the better thing for them to give it up; it is easier…” It certainly would be, but however it is done Red House should be returned to state control as soon as is feasible, although it may involve some negotiation first.
As mentioned above, the issue of the collection is largely a separate matter. At the time the founding of the Institute was announced, the then PPP/C government did come under criticism from some who pointed to the ruling party’s skewed approach to archives, lavishing state attention on those related to Dr Jagan and the PPP, and neglecting the general archives which at that time were poorly housed in Main Street and the RACS building under the museum. In addition, the wisdom of having what were thought in some instances to be public documents under party control was also raised, along with the notion of there being no unified collection of historical documents all of which would come under the legislation dealing with archives.
(It might be noted that a new national archives was finally built on former president Bharrat Jagdeo’s watch, although the questions of whether the building met the requirements of a modern archival repository, and whether it catered for expansion, have never been answered. It was perversely named the Walter Rodney Archives instead of the National Archives in some formulation, although the structure itself could quite reasonably have been named the Walter Rodney building.)
Perhaps recognizing the politically fractured nature of this society and the lack of trust which pervades it, one suggestion following the establishment of the Centre, was that like the United States which has separate presidential libraries, there could be discrete collections pertaining to the various Guyanese presidents who served as heads of government. This idea was revived by Bevon Currie in a letter to this newspaper last week, although one has to wonder whether either Forbes Burnham or Desmond Hoyte had the benefit of a Janet Jagan, who so assiduously collected and preserved material for her party over the decades.
Certainly, in a small society like this one, it is an expensive way to go in terms of collecting historical records and staffing a depository. In ideal circumstances, perhaps discrete collections could be accommodated in the national archives, although catalogued independently of the main sequences. However, these are far from being ideal circumstances. Before anything is done, there should be talks between all sides about what kind of arrangements could be put in place to guarantee the conservation (and preservation) of such party collections which might be brought under state care, or a decision taken as to whether these (not the publicly owned buildings in which they may be lodged) should be fully in private hands ‒ including responsibility for staff salaries.
All sides need to be comfortable with any agreement they reach. After all, if the PNC in particular, assembles its own documents in due course, it may find that one day the boot is on the other foot.
