Once in a while a press statement is fired off from one or the other of our political fortresses that lands in the public arena with all the explosive force of a cruise missile. The particular release which is relevant here emanated from Redoubt Freedom House, and concerned what might be thought by some to be an anodyne enough topic, namely, Red House. Those more familiar with the disharmonies of our little social polity, however, will immediately recognize that on the contrary, this is a subject bristling with booby traps. After all, in this country for the PPP as well as for some in the PNC, history is not just the past, it is also the present and the future.
To put the press statement in context, during the budget debate it was revealed that after expensive renovations, Red House, which is a heritage building belonging to the state, was leased by the PPP/C government to a private company for 99 years at a rental of $1,000 per month. That notwithstanding, the staff there were still paid by the state. At first the response from the coalition government was confined to the matter of the rescission of the lease, but more recently the debate has expanded to encompass consideration of the contents of the building in question.
After the PPP/C came to office in 1992, Red House was in due course made the repository of papers, photographs, etc, relating to the late President Cheddi Jagan, as well as an amorphous collection of other things associated with him. It was called the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre, and periodically held lectures, seminars and the like on the party’s leading founding father. What is clear is that the illegal leasing of state property at a peppercorn rent was intended to allow the PPP to keep control of the collection and the building where it was lodged in the event of a change of government.
That has now come to pass, and the current administration is proposing that Red House be used for the collections of other presidents in addition to those of Dr Jagan. Prima facie this might seem like a not unreasonable suggestion; after all, this is a small country which does not have unlimited resources to expend on individual presidential libraries, so to speak, such as exist in the United States. However, this suggestion has sent Freedom House into a tailspin, prompting a party which is no slouch when it comes to intemperate press releases, to relieve itself of a particularly imprudent communication.
The PPP/C does have one legitimate complaint against the government, although it does not impinge directly on the matter of the use of the building. According to the PPP, Attorney-General Basil Williams asked to meet the management committee of Red House on the matter, but apparently did not send anything in writing first from the AG’s Chambers, which is surely not acceptable. The party advised the committee not to meet Mr Williams under such circumstances, although two members did go. The exchange during that encounter was, apparently, very unsatisfactory.
It might be observed that on an issue as sensitive as this, the discussions should be held first perhaps (although not necessarily) at a different political level, and in the initial stages, at least, should involve government officials who are known for their diplomatic skills. These are not the kind of circumstances where it would be appropriate to rely in the first instance on the AG’s famous courtroom style.
It is to be expected that the PPP would resist any proposal to amend the function of Red House to include other presidents, and in a democracy they are entitled to put up a case in defence of their position. Having said that, however, some of their arguments were eccentric if not bizarre. They identified the colour ‘Red’ on the house as symbolic of Cheddi Jagan’s communism, an ideology which they said PNC presidents Forbes Burnham and Desmond Hoyte did not share. That is certainly true of Hoyte, although it is perhaps to overlook the Sophia Declaration in Burnham’s case, and Jagan’s decision to offer “critical support” in consequence of it.
As for the four freedoms the party said Jagan represented and the other two did not, it is surely a historical distortion to say that Burnham did not play a role in Guyana’s independence, and was not anti-colonial and anti-imperialist, or that Hoyte was not instrumental at some level in the restoration of democracy, although both of them are associated with rigged elections. But even if all that the release claimed were true, it would still not constitute an argument for not having all presidential papers deposited in one location. However, they would not have to be integrated; they could remain in discrete collections catalogued separately. After all, this is what is done all over the world.
If the PPP wanted to keep the Jagan collection hermetically sealed from ‘contamination’, as they have described it, by PNC presidents, then it could be argued that this should be a private arrangement in private premises, not involving a state-owned heritage building. On principle, one feels, there cannot be a state collection of partisan papers only; the point about archives is that they collect everything worthy of preservation, irrespective of whether the actors in the political drama were good or bad, communist or imperialist, dictators or democrats. And as mentioned above, considering the rate at which we are accumulating new presidents, the state cannot afford to maintain individual repositories for each of them.
And just which presidents in the view of Freedom House are worthy of sharing space with Dr Jagan in the Red House? The answer is unsurprisingly, all of the PPP ones. That at least should set the political cognoscenti all a twitter, the wags among them no doubt musing whether in terms of his style former president Bharrat Jagdeo might not reflect more the patina of a Forbes Burnham than of a Cheddi Jagan.
Levity aside, it is apparent from the statement that what is driving this is the hagiography of Cheddi Jagan. “Red House”, said the release, “must reject the subterfuge and bullyism by the APNU+AFC to subvert the annals of history and to allow historical revisionism to prosper…” Then most extraordinarily it goes on to refer to the fact that “some countries have criminalized the negationist revisionism of certain historical events as well as the denial and minimization of historical events associated with outstanding personalities in their countries’ history.”
Needless to say, this is not about history, which must involve open debate, not received interpretations and the closing of avenues of research and discussion. It is undemocratic societies which try to control ‘history’ by only allowing the public access to approved versions of past events and personalities, and it would be to do Cheddi Jagan’s memory a great disservice, one might have thought, to associate him with such views.
The party did go on to add that Guyana need not go the route of the criminalization of ‘revisionism’ “save there is total unanimity and consensus to go that far.” This is disturbing since the PPP is not opposed to this in principle; it simply recognizes that at present there is no “unanimity” on the subject, so the way to go is to “let sleeping dogs lie.” So here we have a party which will not tolerate the accommodation of papers associated with Burnham and Hoyte alongside those of Jagan, because those presidents were anti-democratic, but which nonetheless deploys arguments in defence of its position that are inherently anti-democratic. Clearly Freedom House has a problem appreciating contradictions, let alone reconciling them.
There are other strange statements in the press release, such as the description of APNU+AFC as “nihilists” who “would have us believe in nothing” and had no purpose other than perhaps “an impulse to destroy Jagan’s legacy.” The converse of this might seem to be that one of the PPP’s primary purposes is to preserve their interpretation of that legacy, and if so, it would suggest that the keepers of the ‘truth’ had more in common with a priestly caste, than a group of politicians.
Be that as it may, the most disquieting part of the statement came at the end, where it warned the coalition not to ‘provoke’ PPP supporters “who hold Dr. Jagan in high esteem,” and referred to extremist elements who might seek “to advance their ‘cause’ based on hate, distrust and rejection” of the coalition’s “efforts to bring into disrepute a symbol associated” with Cheddi Jagan.
This is nothing short of disgraceful. It constitutes an indirect threat of sorts, which has no business emanating from any party in a democracy. The matter of Red House is one for discussion and negotiation, not for threats. Once again, while founding their stance on Cheddi Jagan’s democratic credentials, those in Freedom House are seeking to cut off democratic debate on this subject by means of intimidation.
