Dear Editor,
Vice President Jagdeo is off to the West African state of Ghana.
His visit follows on the heels of a high-level meeting between President Irfaan Ali and President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana on the margins of the just concluded 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Vice President Jagdeo is no stranger to Africa. He has been there before in the mid-1990’s as Minister of Finance to share Guyana’s experience drawing on its National Development Strategy and its applicability to other developing countries.
As President of Guyana, he attended the 16th Conference of Commonwealth Heads of Government held in 1999 in Durban, South Africa.
Later, in 2010 Jagdeo along with other members of the UN High Level Group on Climate Change Financing met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to explore potential sources of funding for climate change adaptation and mitigation.
In 2001 Jagdeo attended a Special Sum-mit for Regions with Tropical Rainforests in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
High level meetings apart, Guyana has enjoyed close and friendly relations with Ghana which gained its independence from Britain on March 6, 1957 under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah.
Cheddi Jagan then Premier British Guiana was invited for the independence celebrations in 1957.
Two years after the split engineered by Burnham took place in the PPP, Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham were invited to join in the independence celebrations in Ghana.
While in Ghana, Jagan called for a meeting with other West Indian leaders to discuss common problems with the hope that the leaders would pressure Burnham to reunite with the PPP or join in a united-front government.
According to Dr. Jagan, ‘I even tried to get Dr. Nkrumah to exert his influence on Burnham.’
But to Dr. Jagan’s surprise, a meeting was held behind his back; ‘To which I was not invited and there Burnham persuaded the West Indian leaders that he would not only win the 1961 election but would also take British Guiana into the West Indies Federation’.
Later, at a meeting in New York chaired by the Foreign Minister of Ghana to find a settlement to the political crisis obtaining at the time in Guiana, the main issue discussed was the electoral system and sharing of ministerial portfolios in a PPP/PNC coalition government.
With no solution in sight, Dr. Jagan in ‘The West on Trial’ wrote;
Kojo Botsio the then Foreign Minister of Ghana intervened and got agreement from all the parties present that a Com-monwealth team visit Guiana to try to work out a settlement.’
According to Jagan ‘The Ghanaian Foreign Minister’s intervention was as a result of my communications with President Nkrumah.’
The Commonwealth Mission led by Professor W.E. Abraham, a close associate of Kwame Nkrumah, arrived in Guiana in February 1963.
Ten days of protracted negotiations followed; in the course of which compromises were made and a final agreement reached on the percentage of votes required under a mixed system of voting for the distribution of seats and the sharing of ministries.
In the end, this is how Dr. Jagan put it: ‘ He (Professor Abraham) telephoned Burnham and then told me Burnham had agreed; he wanted to know whether he could make an announcement at the airport. I told him this could be done after my meeting with Burnham. This was a fatal mistake, for Burnham used the departure of the Mission to frustrate our efforts to make a settlement.’
The Ghanaian leader’s’ efforts to find a political solution to Guyana’s problem at that time is etched in the annals of our countries’ history.
I recall as a boy, growing up in Georgetown, my parents took me to what was then known as ‘Bourda Green’ to observe ‘Ghana Day’ where Hundreds of Guyanese would turn out to listen to speeches by national leaders
‘Ghana Day’ has been celebrated in Guyana long before we gained our independence.
As Foreign Minister of Guyana, I met Kofi Annan as Secretary General of the UN and presented to him a copy of Cheddi Jagan’s ‘The West on Trial’ along with a letter from President Janet Jagan.
Vice President Jagdeo’s visit to Ghana comes in the sixty-fourth year of friendship and cooperation between the peoples of Guyana and Ghana.
His visit will coincide with a three- day conference sponsored by the World Resources Forum ’21.
The conference will be held from October 12 to 14, the first ever to be held on African soil.
Keynote speeches will be made by renowned global actors centred around the theme ‘A Green Deal for Sustainable Resources’ no doubt with an eye on the upcoming 26th United Nations Climate Change conference to be held in Glasgow, Scotland from 31 October to 12 November 2021.
Guyanese look forward to strengthening the bonds of friendship and cooperation with the people of Ghana.
Yours faithfully,
Clement J. Rohee
