How different is the PPP from its enemies in the sixties?

Jul 27, 2008 Letters

Dear Editor,
I refer to Mr. Harry Hergash’s letter in Kaieteur News (July 22) titled: “The younger generation deserves the truth of Guyanese history.”

Mr. Hergash is just another person in a never-ending line of people who think they can deceive the Guyanese people by their claims of neutrality when they mask their pro-government sympathies with all types of so-objective letters in the press. Mr. Hergash writes that neither my account of the sixties nor Mrs. Jagan’s holds the truth.

He went on to say the new generation ought to be given the truth. But the truth is Hergash’s version and he thinks he is being subtle when he keeps repeating what released American documents revealed about the private media’s attitude to the Government of Premier Jagan.

First, I failed to see how I can be put in the same category with Mrs. Jagan. She was an active politician in the sixties who felt the brunt of the American interventionist tactics. I write in the same tradition as Mr. Hergash – someone without an axe to grind. What Mr. Hergash has done is that in order to strengthen Janet Jagan’s case, he puts me down as one who is not objective.

But why is Hergash himself objective? Guess why I am not objective? Because my version of the sixties clashes with Mrs. Jagan.

Hergash doesn’t like that, so he categorizes me as biased. After doing that, he again quotes from American documents that showed that the private media hounded down Premier Jagan.

I never denied that the private media confronted Premier Jagan. My question was what was wrong with that. The post-sixty generation grew up on a diet of media destabilisation of the Jagan Government in that era written by Jagan himself (The West on Trial). I am contending that the revisionist interpretation of the sixties is still to be written and when it is done, it will reveal that what the private media did to Premier Jagan is what is normal in most countries when the media sees a government that is not working in the interest of the nation.

I believe the private media saw Dr. Jagan as a fanatical, irrational leader bent on communizing his government with secret help from the USSR and Cuba. What the media did then is what the media is doing now in the US against George Bush. They see the Iraq war as an American catastrophe
Mr. Hergash should take his focus off of me and concentrate on what Dr. Jagan did in his career – support Soviet destabilisation of East European Governments that wanted freedom.

This is the same man who fumed against American intrigue against his government. Two final points: I hope Mr. Hergash is grateful to American democracy for releasing documents about Guyana so we can know the truth which Mr. Hergash wants for the younger generation of Guyanese. But what about the whole truth which we are yet to see because the Russian and Cuban archives aren’t releasing anything?

When we get our hands on those declassified papers they will reveal that Jagan was no innocent player in the Cold War. Soviet money came to Dr. Jagan with which the PPP bought enormous amounts of real estate all over Guyana.

The list includes a section of Regent Street between Camp and Wellington Streets, part of which housed the PPP commercial enterprise, GIMPEX. Soviet money bought land on which Mirror is now situated at Industrial Site. Communist funds paid for the printing press. What about Cuban arms and PPP cadres sent for military training in Cuba? They returned home and effectively used the training in the tit-for-tat violence. Why don’t you tell people the truth about the sixties, Mr. Hergash, since you were around in those day.

Finally, Mr. Hergash sees inconsistencies between some earlier writings and my present conceptualization. But he hasn’t pointed them out to me.

All he did was to say that I denounced the violence that came out of Buxton. I did. So were thousands of others including Eusi Kwayana, Andaiye, TUC leader Lincoln Lewis and many other fine Guyanese. What has that got to do with my writings at the moment? When Mr. Hergash publishes his examples, I give him my assurances I will explain each point he has made.

In closing, I noticed that Mr. Hergash quotes the American envoy as calling the privately owned Chronicle a rag in the sixties. Well it is still a rag. This time under the PPP. So how different is the PPP from its enemies in the sixties?

Frederick Kissoon