Friendship University or Stalinist School of Falsification?

Feb 15, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,

I refer to the letter written by Mr. Roger Williams (Kaieteur News of 10 February, 2010) in response to the article captioned, “Honorary Doctorate for President Jagdeo (SN 8/2/10).

Mr. Williams and the bloggers writing on the Guyana politics need to know, first of all that the Peoples Friendship University’s proper name is the “Lumumba College”, the former Ideological College of the now Reformed and Reconstructed “Communist” Party of the former Soviet Union. It was named after the famous Patrice Lumumba, a democratically elected President of Congo and a renounced African liberation leader. He was assassinated by the infamous military dictator, General Mobutu, in full support of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as the now released secret files will show.

Mr. Jagdeo or if you prefer, the Honorable Dr Jagdeo, is a product of that bankrupt ideology, called Stalinism, which was propagated at that institution. That school of thought is responsible, essentially, for the set back of our country and the under-developed world. The Lumumba College or University is a backstreet school. It is often referred to by great scholars as the: “Stalinist School of Falsification”.

The truth is – most of the students who got a scholarship, on the expense of the Russian workers and people, did not have to have any specific set of qualifications to gain entry. One such attendant of the Lumumba School is a Minister in the current Jagdeo administration, who reportedly spent most of his time drinking and smoking and when he returned to Guyana was offered a job as a party functionary.

I must admit that I was sent to such a school, but I was a little more fortunate than Mr. Jagdeo in that I was sent to the former East Germany (the German Democratic Republic), as the head of a delegation of party activists. We were the first set of activists from the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) to attend the Berlin College.

I must further confess that had I not gone, I would have been removed as General Secretary of the Guyana Cane Farmers’ Association and other important positions, I held at the time. My father, Mr. Abdool Rahman, who was the President of the Association at the time, was very reluctant to let me go for such studies. He was disturbed for two reasons, first that I was at the time doing my Higher Diploma studies in Industrial Relations and Social Studies at the Critchlow Labour College, with the intention of pursuing studies at the University of Guyana and subsequently a career in Law. His other reason was that he was quite skeptical of the political culture of the PPP, since its transition from a national-patriotic mass movement into a Marxist-Leninist Party, which he perceived as Stalinism.

The truth is – I was called in by the General Secretary of the Party, Dr. Cheddi Jagan, and told in no uncertain terms that I could not hold such a high office in a mass organisation, totally controlled at the time by the PPP, if I did go on the scholarship. He said he would like me to head the delegation of activists to East Germany, since he wanted us to study the model of government, which was constructed after the Second World War, as a National Coalition of political parties and mass organisations. The PPP at that time was leading the platform for the formation of a government of National Front, which would have included the Peoples National Congress, which is the subject that cannot be entertained in this letter column.

Of course, Dr. Jagan at the time was completely under the influence of the Soviet Union and the predominant ideology any criticisms of the Soviet model of development was regarded as anti-communism and an enemy of the Party. The slogan “Anti-Sovietism is Anti-communism” was used to isolate and weed-out genuine members who were raising genuine criticisms. Further in-depth understanding of these facts can be found at the former Red House, now called the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre, where one can find all the relevant literature pertaining to this current subject under discussion.

The true history of our country is yet to be written. There are different aspects of Guyana’s history being debated in the pages of our daily newspapers, which encourage more in-depth research and understanding.

Dr. Walter Rodney, one of the most forthright opponent of the Burnham dictatorship and a vigorous proponent of grassroots politics for fundamental change in Guyana and the rest of the world, was always baffled by the argument put forward by certain leading elements of the PPP, for the inclusion of the Burnham dictatorship in the National Patriotic government. He clearly understood that the formation of such a government was the product of the very dictatorship, and hence his booklet, “Peoples Power, No Dictator!!”

Those of us, who were still in the PPP during the discussion on the formation of such a government, found it very difficult to rationalise our existence in the PPP. What Professor Rodney did not know, at the time, that we had agreed with him, we were not in a position to openly express our opinion, as is the case now with many in the PPP, who are directly employed by the Jadgeo regime.

The level of fear and intimidation that stark our land is ten times more than one can imagine, under the Burnham rule. Mr. Moses Nagamottoo, a prominent member of the Central Committee of the PPP, and a former colleague of mine at the Mirror newspaper, is one such persons, who is very fearful of being expelled from the PPP and so he plays for time, whilst the sugar workers, the backbone of the PPP, the Bauxite workers, the rice farmers and now the miners are catching hell.

Dr. Jagan and his wife, Janet Jagan, like most of us, were inspired by the mass uprising in Russia that led to the removal of the tyrannical Tsarist Russia and replacement of a truly Peoples’ government, was not based on the ideology of Joseph Stalin, the mass murder of the Soviet Republic of Russia. It was a concept that is scientifically-based, and underwent a period of nearly two centuries of intense debate and formulation.

Dr. Jagan may have been misguided by what he perceived as socialism in Russia at the time, but he was sensitive enough to recognise that he could not pursue such an ideology to the very end, where our people would have been totally pauperised. His government of the latter part of the 1950’s and the early periods of the 1960’s demonstrated that he was an able administrator, incorruptible and highly moral in his personal life.

Our present day Stalinists in the PPP have learnt nothing from Dr. Jagan, but they all aspire to take over his mantle. They sit by and allow Dr Jagdeo to treat them as mere minions, whilst our country bleeds and our people cry every day for help.

In conclusion, I found it useful to restate what Dr. Walter Ramsahoye, a prominent Guyanese Neurologist, said in one of his erratic moments on the CN Sharma TV programme. He stated that certain elements in the country who were spouting the ideas of Socialism and Communism did not have the intellectual capacity to comprehend the writings of Karl Marx and the scientific ideology that he propounded, much less to implement any of it.

He was quite correct, since that body of accumulated knowledge of struggles of the masses of people, universally, cannot be truly understood by whose who attended a school such as the ‘Lumumba School of Falsification’. This ideology was also rigidly followed by the PNC, under the Forbes Burnham and now followed more intensely by the current regime headed by the Honorable Dr. Jagdeo.

M. Jinnah Rahman

 

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