PERSPECTIVES
A BETRAYAL OF TRUST
Guyana was a popular foreign policy agenda item for both the U.S. and British Governments in the 1950s and 1960s. The U.S. and British Governments had concerns over the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Administration’s perceived close ties to Moscow and Cuba. And note that the early 1950s in the U.S. witnessed the McCarthy witch-hunt against Communism, and the beginnings of the Cold War with a rhetorically running battle between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union.

Today, December 7, 2009, marks 45 years for the infamous 1964 Election Day in British Guiana (now Guyana). The U.S. and British Governments imposed this election upon the people in a bid to remove the PPP from office through a new electoral arrangement, Proportional Representation (PR). The results of this election were:

The PPP secured the most votes and it was the only Party that increased its percentage share of the votes over the 1961 election. However, the Governor violated British conventions that would allow Dr Cheddi Jagan to form the government as the leader of the Party with the majority of votes. Instead, the Governor, through a constitutional amendment, called on Mr. Burnham of the People’s National Congress (PNC) to establish a government with the assistance of the UF (United Force), creating the short-lived PNC-UF Coalition.

The December 7, 1964 date is strategic in that it represents the climax of international intrigue and betrayal to remove a popular government from office; notwithstanding its several electoral triumphs, through free, fair, and transparent elections right on from 1953. It is significant to note, too, that the PPP on more than a few occasions was the victim of ‘reduced terms in office’, culminating in aborted policy formulation and implementation, e.g., in the 1953, 1961, and 1997 terms.

But the focus here is to show how in 1964 we reached the point where the PPP Government’s term of office suffered an abortion, to make way for the election of December 7. Universal Adult Suffrage hit the scene in 1953 when the PPP won the first national election. The local middle class, a hodgepodge of the league of Coloured People (LCP) and the British Guiana East Indian Association (BEGEIA), etc., secured only 13% of the vote. Engaging in a strong alliance with the colonial elite, this local middle class (LCP, BGEIA, etc.) manipulated to its advantage, strong use of the communist rhetoric in the Caribbean region; a stage management that falsely proved the PPP aided and abetted this communist threat to the region. Britain subsequently suspended the Constitution after the PPP Government was in office for only 133 days in 1953.

The U.S. Special National Intelligence Estimate on March 21, 1961 alluded in its report to the PPP’s communist ideology and its closeness to Castro’s Cuba and Moscow. Britain, under constant U.S. pressure, was reluctant to grant Independence under Jagan, but it was unable to remove the PPP under the then electoral system, the First-Past-the-Post System. The U.S. Administration, and less so, the British, perceived the PPP as a communist threat to the region.

U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk in a telegram to Lord Home expressed concern over a possible Jagan victory in the August 21, 1961 election. The U.S. Government tried to stop the 1961 election in an effort to remove Jagan. Part of the telegram on August 11, 1961, reads as: “…No doubt you would expect us to show considerable sensitivity about the prospect of Castroism in the Western Hemisphere and that we are not inclined to give people like Jagan the same benefit of the doubt which was given two or three years ago to Castro himself. However, we do believe that Jagan and his American wife are very far to the left indeed and that his accession to power in British Guiana would be a most troublesome setback in this Hemisphere.”

President Kennedy and Prime Minister Macmillan in a Memorandum of Conversation at Birch Grove, England, June 30, 1963, recommended a Burnham-D’Aguiar Coalition and the need to institute PR. Clearly, the U.S. stage-managed the birth of a PNC-UF Coalition long before the 1964 elections. The U.S., true to form, ensured that democracy, freedom, and due process played second fiddle to consolidation of its own overseas capitalist interests.

Political instability and racial tension turned out to be important conditions that aided the U.S. and British Governments’ quest to remove the PPP Administration. The overt action of British troops, and the covert interventions of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) clearly demonstrated the foreign origins of the 1962-1964 disturbances. These disturbances left 700 people dead by 1964.

The December 1964 elections brought a temporary conclusion to the battle between a capitalist and communist orientation; leaving the problem of class, race and ethnicity in a state of flux, precisely what the foreign interventionists desired.

Jagan believed that Indians and Africans are not a uni-class; that they interact in other areas, too, as economics, politics, and culture; Rodney believed that advocates overstate the argument for the dominant role of racial division; and Perry Mars explained the disturbances in the 1960s mainly through the importance of class and class relations to the foreign interventionists. And so, to facilitate this advantage, the ultimate betrayal emerged – the December 1964 election.