There are some people who are so blinded by hate and prejudice against the PPP and the PPP/C administration that no matter how much progress and development takes place, they simply turn a blind eye to them and pretend that nothing is happening in the country and that conditions of life of the Guyanese people are getting worse under the PPP/C government.

This tendency to denigrate the PPP is not new. From the early days of the formation of the PPP, attempts were made to project the PPP as “communistic”, “atheistic”, and ‘totalitarian’ by those who for political and ideological reasons wanted to preserve the colonial status quo. The attacks in those early days were orchestrated mainly by the colonial powers in collaboration with local reactionaries including some sections of the religious community, all in an effort to, as it were, poison the minds of the Guyanese people against the PPP.

Several attempts were made to destroy and split the Party which unfortunately happened in 1955 when the PPP was split into two camps, one led by Dr. Cheddi Jagan and the other by Forbes Burnham. Interestingly, both parties retained the original name PPP due mainly to the broad support the party enjoyed among the masses, in particular the working class.

The split was engineered by the Colonial Office which was worried that the newly formed PPP was creating quite a stir among the electorate which could pose enormous problems for the colonial government. Such fears were by no means unfounded since the Party had already demonstrated that it was a force to reckon with after it won 18 out of the 24 seats in the elections of 1953. The Party was only three years old at the time but its influence and reach had transcended the boundaries of race, religion and creed. For the first time in the history of the hemisphere, a left-wing party won political power through constitutional and democratic means. As such, the victory attracted worldwide attention and rang alarm bells in London and Washington. The establishment of a workers’ state in the region was not something the United States and Britain wanted to see happen and every conceivable means had to found to thwart the political momentum unleashed by the PPP.

It is against this background that both the suspension of the Constitution in 1953 and the split of the PPP in 1955, a mere two years later must be seen and located. The British government, under pressure from the United States administration, took a decision to make use of all the means available to them to deny the PPP political power and to emasculate the PPP. The Constitution was suspended and the PPP forcibly removed from office after a mere six months and in its place was installed an interim administration comprised of several defeated candidates including some who had their deposits forfeited.

Apart from the use of force to remove the democratically elected PPP from office, attempts were also made to influence some of the leading figures to leave the Party and to form their own party. The Robertson Commission which was sent by Her Majesty’s Government to investigate the conditions that led to the suspension of the constitution and to make recommendations, openly recommended that the more “enlightened minds” in the Party should remove themselves from the PPP and form their own political party. Among the so-called enlightened mind was that of Forbes Burnham who was Party Chairman and who openly sought to take over the leadership of the Party from Dr. Cheddi Jagan. He failed in his bid to manipulate the delegates at a hastily summoned Party Congress to declare him leader and took the decision to form his own Party in 1955. His ‘leader or nothing’ obsession was not realized much to his dismay.

The split in the PPP in 1955 was a sad blow to the Party but the PPP not only survived the split but grew increasingly stronger at every national elections. For example, in the elections of 1957 the PPP (Jagan) won 10 of the 14 seats with the PPP (Burnham) barely mustering 3 of the seats. The humiliation suffered by Burnham forced him to change the name of his party to that of the People’s National Congress immediately after the elections of 1957.

Today fresh attempts are being made to undermine the unity and credibility of the Party by those who seek to exploit every situation within and without the Party and government in order to create the impression that the Party is moving away from the Jagan thinking and from the core values and principles which the Party had embraced and which provided the ideological and philosophical underpinning of the Party. The fact that the Jagans are no longer physically around provide these hatemongers with fresh ammunition to attack the Party and its leadership.

As the Party celebrates its 60th anniversary, it remains loyal to its mission to transform this country to a truly people’s democracy where all Guyanese, regardless of race or political affiliation, are provided with an equal opportunity to develop their potential to the fullest. The struggle has been long and hard; but the vision of the Party to create that good life for the Guyanese people has not changed.