Dear Editor,
This year marks sixty years since the formation of the People’s National Congress (PNC) and the party, now once again in the driver’s seat, is going out of its way to rewrite its history and role in the development, or some may say underdevelopment, of the country’s socio-political and economic architecture.
Seven years ago, the PPP observed the 60th anniversary of its formation. The PPP was formed on January 1, 1950 which makes the party the oldest political party in Guyana and among the oldest in the Commonwealth Caribbean.
It is common knowledge that the split in the PPP took place a mere two years after the suspension of the constitution in 1953 following a landslide victory of the PPP in the elections of April 1953, the first to be held under universal adult suffrage. It is an open secret that the split was engineered by the British government following a recommendation of the Robertson Commission which was set up to ascertain the factors which resulted in the suspension of the constitution and to make recommendations to the British government on the way forward for the colony.
True to form, the Commission justified the suspension of the constitution and recommended a period of marking time until the “communists” and “hardliners” in the party were removed from the party and the more “moderate” elements were allowed to take control of it.
It was against the foregoing background that the split in the PPP in 1955 and the subsequent formation of the PNC in 1957 has to be situated. Burnham, who was Chairman of the PPP at the time of its formation in 1950, was seen by the British as the moderate in the party as opposed to Dr Jagan who was seen as someone with a strong leftist predisposition. Burnham was encouraged to take over the leadership of the PPP which he unsuccessfully attempted to do by all manner of political subterfuges, which included the convening of an extraordinary party congress in early1955 aimed at removing Dr Jagan as party Leader and installing himself as Leader.
His “leader or nothing ultimatum” did not go down well with the vast majority of members both at the grassroots and the leadership levels. It was as a consequence of his failure to wrest the leadership of the party from Dr Jagan that he formed his own party, which interestingly he also named PPP. For about two years the country experienced two PPPs, one led by Dr Jagan and the other by Mr Burnham. Both parties fought the 1957 elections under the same name ‒ PPP. It was not until the humilitating defeat of Burnham’s PPP that Burnham changed the name of his party to the People’s National Congress (PNC).
The split of the PPP in 1955 left deep scars on the body politic of this nation of ours. The working class and ethnic unity that was forged in the early 1950s was shattered and even though Dr Jagan’s PPP continued to win successive elections in 1957 and 1961, the sad reality is that the monster of race began to raise its ugly head ever since the party split with varying degrees of intensity. Few can deny that the country experienced one of its most painful and turbulent periods during the early 1960s leaving in its wake a fractured and fragmented society the effects of which we are still to fully recover from.
Several motives and explanations for the split were postulated by politicians and academics. There are some who saw the split as ideologically driven within a Cold War context; others see it as essentially racial in nature while some see it as rank opportunism on the part of Burnham to assert himself politically and in the process to secure for himself a more rewarding position than he could have otherwise attained.
It is not possible in this short letter to go into all the intricacies and complexities of the matter regarding the split. Suffice it to say that both the British and the American administrations badly miscalculated in their assessment and characterization of Dr Jagan and the PPP in terms of ideological orientation and political philosophy. This was acknowledged by no less a person than a former advisor to President Kennedy, Arthur Schlesinger who many years later referred to the great injustice done to Dr Jagan.
Yours faithfully,
Hydar Ally
