IT’S again time to remember Cheddi and Janet Jagan, Guyana’s two towering Presidents of the Republic who, together and each on their own, left eternal footprints in the sands of Guyana’s time.

Together and alone, they also led the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) throughout their lives; each revered and respected at home, in like and different ways, by the majority of Guyanese — appreciated more by some than others, but known to all for the roles in their everlasting struggles for the ultimate independence and political freedom of British Guiana from the clutches of British colonialism and American-led imperialism.

Those who still speak of the Jagans in ill terms choose to for reasons they choose to hold on to, but Cheddi and Janet will eternally remain household names in Guyana, and permanent figures in the nation’s 20th and 21st Century history, from the formation of the PPP in 1946, to Cheddi’s departure in 1996, and Janet’s in 2009.

Working with both for the first six years (1993-1999) following the restoration of democracy through free and fair elections in 1992, was more than a pleasure or a duty; more of a mission than a task or assignment; my daily work; less of a job than fulfilment of what could only have been a dream until that blessed calling.

Cheddi and Janet both had unfathomable depths of memory, predicting courses of unfolding global events, and commanding recollections of facts and figures, of fine details of events decades past, in ways that expected would have been erased by, with and over time.

They explained the most complex world events to Guyanese of all walks of life through messages in the simplest language, easily and equally understood by stevedores, estate workers and Amerindians as by University of Guyana (UG) graduates, Queen’s College (QC) students or primary schoolers.

I remember accompanying Dr. Jagan, as President, on a Guyana Defence Force (GDF) helicopter to a faraway, mountainous hinterland area from which came an iconic photograph of the President of the Republic wearing a ceremonial Amerindian headgear over European wear, explaining — with chalk on blackboard — the economic inequality faced by Guyana compared with the USA, UK and Canada, and how it affected them in Region One.

I remember Janet, as elected President, still coming to The Mirror, as per usual, after Cheddi’s death to fulfil editorial duties, often having to be reminded that her presidential security detail was still waiting downstairs while she plugged away on her ribbon typewriter.

Janet sometimes appeared more comfortable at The Mirror than at State House or the Office of the President, and even when she was advised to stop driving, she’d spend most of her day at her South Ruimveldt editor’s office.

The first woman President, in advanced age, and with the most lifelong experience as a party leader, was succeeded by the youngest-ever PPP candidate for the presidency, much to the anguish of others who measured their qualification for succession by years of membership, while Janet looked a quarter-century ahead.

She barely tilted under pressure after her husband’s death, bearing her pain within without letting go, assuming his leadership role instinctively, ensuring all was done to send him off by spreading his dust over Guyana’s three counties and major rivers after the biggest send-off ever seen in Guyana at Babu Jaan in Berbice.

As I watched Cheddi’s body turn to ashes, I was looking at an eternal piece of Latin American and Caribbean and world history that would never be dusted.
Janet was the first woman to be elected President of Guyana.

To her political opponents, who preferred to punish her for where she was born, that Janet was the longest-serving parliamentarian (with over 50 years) in the National Assembly when her husband died was simply not enough to even qualify her for candidacy for the presidency.

But, never mind the claim that her birthright disqualified her from continuing to serve in public office like she always did, Janet was elected free-and-fair, and fair-and-square.
Janet would eventually opt to Give Peace A Chance while her political opponents warred on the streets over her selection and election.

The PPP would also agree to a CARICOM proposal for introduction of a two-term limit, obviously seen by many in the party as a mechanism to reduce its ability to field a re-electable presidential candidate as popular as Janet or Cheddi.

But the proposal was welcomed by the political opposition as the hopeful beginning-of-the-end of what they referred to as “the Jagan political dynasty”.
Term limits have ensured neither party can field a popular candidate for a third time, and that need arose only once since.

But political ingenuity never, ever being in short supply in Demerara, British Guiana or Guyana, the PPP has not at all been robbed of continuity in political leadership since Cheddi and Janet died as the only General Secretaries and effective Party Leaders since 1964.

Presidents Bharrat Jagdeo, Donald Ramotar and Irfaan Ali have each led the country at key periods as part of a united and collective party leadership that continued to adopt and adapt strategies and tactics based on political philosophies and actual realities, creatively applying countless years of accumulated scientific yardsticks to measure causes and effects before discussing and debating proposed solutions and arriving at final conclusions.

Current PPP General Secretary and Vice-President Jagdeo has emerged from being the youngest-ever Guyana President to the best Vice-President that neither Cheddi nor Janet ever had.

But while the term-limit formula formally robbed Brazil of the continuity of ‘Lula’ Da Silva as President after lifting over 300 million Brazilians from poverty in two terms, that’s definitely not been the case in Guyana, where continuity was robbed, in both Janet and Cheddi’s cases, by other than conspiratorial political means.

That they will both be honoured on March 13, a date of major importance in the political history of CARICOM, is also very significant, and will be the subject of my next column on that day.