Assessing the historical role of Mrs. Jagan

Sep 16, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I believe most of my readers would know that my policy is not to reply to anonymous letter-writers in the Guyanese newspapers. I swear on my parents’ grave that I do not read anonymous blogs.

There has to be something wrong about civilization that human beings can publicly attack real persons and tell them about their faults, bitterly criticize them and do so from under the dress of their mother.

That is certainly a pathetic aberration of modern civilization. No human being should assault their own dignity by descending to the level of these degenerate cowards. I think such persons were failed by their parents.

Not all parents in this world are proper counselors. But then again life isn’t perfect. One recent letter on my treatment of the sixties was written by someone who uses the name Errol Arthur. That is a PPP cadre that I know. I am not going to reply to such cowardly people.

Mr. Emile Mervin (a real person who worked in the media before he migrated) penned an interesting letter in the September 13 issue of KN titled, “Any review of the PPP’s history has to include the role of Mrs. Jagan.”

In that missive, Mr. Mervin wrote; “But I think the Kissoons and Rooplalls of Guyana also have to factor into the state of ethnic polarization, the role of the other co-founder of the PPP, Mrs. Janet Jagan.”

I have been doing this page on a daily basis for a number of years now. It is only natural for any reader to miss a few dozens of them.

I try to read the newspapers everyday but who wouldn’t miss a day due to the intrusion of unforeseen circumstances. So I don’t expect Mr. Mervin to catch up with all my columns over the years.

I have written several pieces on Mrs. Jagan in which I have contextualized her negative influence on Dr. Jagan and the PPP throughout that party’s history. In one of my articles several years ago I expressed similar sentiments to what Professor Lloyd Best offered in an interview when asked about Mrs. Jagan. Mr. Mervin told readers that he saw the Best remarks on an internet posting.

In fact, that assessment of Mrs. Jagan is contained in the edited volume, “The PPP of Guyana, 1950-1992: An Oral History.” Frank Birbalsingh (ed). Hansib: London, 2007.

I would suggest to Mr. Mervin that if he is going to get this publication, he should be careful about its contents. The questions were not searching at all.

The interviewer could have done more to bring out the negative nuances of the Jagans and their incompetent politics in the sixties.

He left vast secrets of our history still buried. Here is one egregious example. Moses Bhagwan in a response told the editor that Mrs. and Dr. Jagan can be extremely ruthless people when they want to and they were nasty in their plans against him.

Naturally, any curious academic would have probed further because what was involved was another interpretation from one of the finest politicians this country has produced, Moses Bhagwan.

Dr. Birbalsingh did not go further. When Mrs. Jagan began to expound on Eusi Kwayana, the editor let her flow. What we have then is a torrid condemnation by Mrs. Jagan of the political character of Mr. Kwayana but readers are still to know what Bhagwan had in mind. Having said that, it would be a gross exaggeration to say Birbalsingh’s text is not useful.

On the contrary, Best, Dr. Fenton Ramsahoye, Moses Bhagwan and Dr. Rupert Roopnarine were splendid in filing gaps in Guyanese history about the negative and sometimes destructive politics of the PPP and Dr. Cheddi Jagan. In this regard, I think the book will be useful to young historians (see my review last year).

I now return to the sentiment of Best about Mrs. Jagan that I wrote about before the publication of Birbalsingh’s volume.

In his evaluation of Mrs. Jagan, Lloyd Best (one of the superb minds the Caribbean produced and an outstanding Caribbean nationalist) painted her as “a person who believed if you were not for me, then you were against me.”

This is one of the traits I detected in Mrs. Jagan when I was just a mere sixteen-year-old lad working in the Michael Forde Bookstore. I felt that character weakness would do immense harm to the PPP and Guyana. I believe I am right.

Like Lloyd Best, I feel Mrs. Jagan has not done anything good for this country. I suggest Guyanese read the Lloyd Best interview.

He corrects any misconception one may have that Cheddi Jagan was a Guyanese hero. On the contrary, he was a destructive man.