IN this ‘Straight Talk’ article, Dr. Cheddi Jagan took issue with the PNC for attempting to undermine parliamentary democracy by way of “buying” parliamentary support through encouraging ‘defections’ of MPs and then claiming that such “support” was indicative of that party becoming a majority party even though the PPP had won 24 seats in the National Assembly as compared to 22 seats won by the PNC in the 1964 elections. Dr. Jagan had long advocated the need for recall legislation to guard against such undemocratic tendencies which only recently was enacted by Parliament.
It would be recalled that the PPP was removed from office in the elections of 1964 even though it won the single largest bloc of votes. This came about through what the former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson described as “a fiddled constitutional arrangement” in which two minority parties, the PNC and the UF, were asked by the British Government to form the government even though the PPP had won the largest number of the popular votes.
The situation is not unlike what is playing out in our Parliament today where the combined opposition with a one-seat majority is behaving as though they are in control of all the branches of government, including the Executive.
Below is a reproduction of that article written by Dr. Jagan after the 1964 elections, which I am sure readers would find interesting especially in the context of our current political situation:

STRAIGHT TALK
During the past week, two statements were made by Neville Bissember, the Leader of Government business in the National Assembly. He said, firstly, that the People’s National Congress was a majority party, and secondly, that at the 1963 London Constitutional Conference I had spoken against the right of recall being inscribed in the constitution.
How does the PNC become a majority party? What is Bissember’s logic? He is obviously referring to the position in the legislature. His claim is that the PNC now has a total of 23 members – 22 seats won at the 1964 PR Elections plus 1 seat occupied by George Bowman who defected from the PPP and has now been made a junior Minister.
According to Bissember, since the PPP has now only 21 members in the Assembly – 24 elected less 3 defections – the PNC is a majority party.
This kind of logic will not fool anyone. It was Bissember and his party that shouted from the housetop from 1961 to 1964 that the PPP was not a majority party, although we had won 20 out of 35 seats at the 1961 election.
At that time, Bissember talked about votes and kept shouting that we did not speak for the majority of the people. Now it would appear, his grounds have shifted.
How can his party be termed a majority party when it polled only 40% of the votes at the 1964 election? (The PPP polled 42.6% in 1961, even though it did not contest 6 of the 35 seats). This fact cannot be changed no matter how many PPP legislators/defectees join for opportunist or other reasons the ranks of the PNC. Actually today, the PNC would have less than 40% of the votes if there was another election.
Even the government’s backers do not believe the fiction that the PNC is a majority party. The Evening Post in its “Town Talk” of Sunday, September 11, after sarcastically talking about “confronted democracy” said: “I think Mr. Sampson would be in for a bit of shock if he confronted the people with a general election at this time.”
And to make matters worse, Bissember resorted to an outright falsehood. He said that I had opposed the principle of recall when it was proposed by the PNC in London. This is a lie.
It is meant to answer PPP and UF criticisms about the Political morality of elevating defected PPP George Bowman into a junior ministership. It is also intended to answer the call by the PPP for an amendment to the Constitution. The PPP is  of the view that any member, who have been elected on a PR party list and subsequently left the party for one reason or another, should be forced to resign.
The fact is that long before the PPP was formed, I had introduced a motion in the Legislative Council for the recall by the electorate of anyone who was elected and then “sold out”. During the time we were in office I raised the matter again. But the Colonial Office argued that the legislator was virtually a free agent, not bond to any party (even though he won as a party candidate), and that “crossing the floor” is quite permissible constitutionally.
I didn’t agree with the argument. However, one can argue that in the case of a Legislator who was elected in a particular constituency he had won on his own merit even though he ran on a party ticket, that he was the choice of the voters.
But this is not so under the list system of proportional representation (PR). Here, a candidate is part of a list. The party is all – important. This is the explanation why persons like Deeroop Maraj and Rupert Tello who had lost in electoral battles before could get elected to the National Assembly.
The PNC never raised the question to recall at the 1963 conference? However, now that it is claiming that it had so argued, it should, to set things right, support the PPP’s call for an amendment to the Constitution.