For the PPP, March has become the month of Cheddi Jagan. I have written and spoken much about the inspirer of the People’s Progressive Party and will again be speaking shortly at an event organized in his honour.
In the meantime I would like to celebrate the beginning of this month by offering for re-publication an article, with an amendment only to the first sentence, which I did on him for last year’s Independence celebrations entitled: “FOR CHEDDI JAGAN THE INDEPENDENCE OF GUYANA SURPASSED EVERY OTHER CONSIDERATION,”
As we enter the month of March once more, it is about time that someone challenges the hate campaign that is being daily waged in some quarters about Cheddi Jagan’s politics and his record of service for the freedom and development of Guyana.
The people of Guyana spoke decisively about Cheddi Jagan when he died. They recorded their judgment of him in their thousands, in a quiet and dignified surge to pay tribute, in an outpouring never seen in the known history of Guyana. They sealed that judgment permanently with their grief and it will be forever etched in the consciousness of all who witnessed it and all who come after.
In the city, towns and rural communities, the Guyanese people gave final recognition to and gratitude for the life of a man who committed himself at a young age to their liberation and sustained that commitment throughout his life, without expectation or hope of reward. They thanked him for it even though some may not have supported him in his lifetime. Had it been possible he would have witnessed for himself the true, forgiving, noble character of the Guyanese people which he always knew existed and in which he had placed lifelong confidence.
The formation of the Political Affairs Committee in 1947 by four intrepid revolutionaries, Cheddi Jagan, Janet Jagan, Ashton Chase and Jocelyn Hubbard, set the stage for the formation of the Peoples’ Progressive Party in 1950 and for the demand for universal adult suffrage, independence and social justice. The daunting road to that goal did not seem to faze those in the leadership of the PPP. They were inspired and motivated by the American Revolution and the constitution it gave birth to, the principles underlying the Atlantic Charter, India and the Soviet Union. Their youth and revolutionary fervor gave them energy and confidence. They brought hope to the Guyanese people.
The astonishing success in bringing together such broad forces under the umbrella of the PPP, the winning of universal adult suffrage and the astounding electoral victory of 1953 set the stage for Guyana’s independence. The setback of the suspension of the constitution and the split in the PPP, although devastating, were temporary. As he did all of his life, Cheddi Jagan shrugged off these defeats and setbacks, focusing instead on the larger picture and the final goal. Having won the 1957 and 1961 elections, the latter under an advanced, self-governing constitution, independence was now within reach, a realizable goal. But as we know, the massive intervention in Guyana by foreign elements with the collusion of their local henchmen between 1962 and 1964, paralysed the PPP government and eventually ensured its removal.
The professional Jagan/PPP haters, motivated by nothing more than common ill-will and spite, barely capable of stringing two credible thoughts (or sentences) together, constantly whip up sensationalism, hurling epithets, in a frenetic drive to sustain a post retirement dollar. They seek endlessly to distort Cheddi Jagan’s record and history, constantly boasting of their own tarnished democratic credentials, forgetting their dedicated commitment to a “communist” regime (as described by those they now uphold) which refused to hold elections and which collapsed from its own dead weight, inviting the worst foreign intervention in this region since our countries gained independence.
Cheddi Jagan is constantly portrayed as a ‘monster communist,’ in scenes plucked right out of the discredited Joe McCarthy era of anti-communist hysteria in the US, and regularly regurgitated to us from hack writers pretending to be ‘analysts,’ ‘essayists’ and ‘theorists,’ who wouldn’t recognize a theory if you hit them over the head with one. But we are never reminded that he is the man who, in desperation at the prospect of independence being postponed, agreed trustingly to place reliance on the self-proclaimed British sense of justice and fairplay to mediate the differences between himself and the opposition, even though he recognized that he might be the loser. He placed his own political future on the line knowing that independence for Guyana surpassed every other consideration and could not be delayed, whatever the internal political consequences. This noble act of selfless patriotism has been lost on those whose motives in criticizing Cheddi Jagan are not based on honest and objective analysis but reek to high heavens, the aroma drifting upwards enshrouded in the big coat of a government television programme from which they were rightfully thrown off and now intent on mean and vulgar revenge to him, his people and his works. However, it was not forgotten by the thousands of all races, creeds and classes who, in the final moment of judgment in March, 1997, rendered a verdict for the ages.
On May 26, 1966, Burnham, then Premier, was stunned by an unfamiliar act of forgiveness and generosity – the appearance of Cheddi Jagan, no longer in power, at the National Park to celebrate with him Guyana’s new status as an independent country and the realization of his dream and pledge in 1949 at Enmore to devote himself to the liberation of Guyana. The now famous embrace between these two leaders, who have shaped so much of Guyana’s political consciousness, says nothing about Forbes Burnham, the victor, but everything about Cheddi Jagan, the vanquished. This man who, then aged 47, dedicated most of the remainder of his life to delivering the Guyanese people from the clutches of authoritarian rule, which was aided and abetted by the Western powers, is the most eloquent answer to all those of his detractors who accuse him of supporting dictatorship and of dictatorial conduct.
Cheddi Jagan’s legacy is now in the hands of history which in due course will analyse his works, including his ideological orientation, world view and sympathy with the socialist world during the Cold War. It will take into account Arthur Schlesinger’s (President Kennedy’s Special Assistant who helped to devise the US’s policy to destabilize Guyana) apology to him in 1993 for conspiring against him and his belated judgment that a “great injustice was done to Cheddi Jagan.” It will consider whether, having regard to the attitude of Western powers to Guyana and their complicity with the events of 1962/4 and 1968/1985, Cheddi Jagan had any alternative but to seek alliances with the socialist world.  That history is already being written.  Professor Rabe’s book, “US Intervention in British Guiana” (Ian Randle Publishers Limited 2005) chronicles the ignoring of the positive reports about Cheddi Jagan, his demonisation and the “destruction of Guyana.”