RESPECT IS DUE TO MRS. JAGAN

Mar 29, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

One day in the eighties, I was taking a stroll past a stadium in one of the Caribbean islands, a track and field meet was going on, and I decided that I should take a peek inside.
Upon approaching the gates of the stadium I politely asked about the entrance fee. The guys manning the gate recognized my accent as being Guyanese and told me the fee, but in passing said that they would allow me in free because they knew that Guyanese were not allowed to leave their country with more than forty dollars.

I felt embarrassed at the sympathy they were showing towards me. I wanted to protest but I knew that what they were saying was true – at the time the Bank of Guyana was only allowing you to leave Guyana with forty dollars. I felt really hurt that this was what my country or rather the then government of my country had brought me to, a point where young boys of a foreign country could make mockery of me because of the restrictions that were placed on Guyanese leaving the country.
But despite my hurt, I did not feel ashamed of being a Guyanese. That shame came later and occurred on local soil.

It occurred in 1997 and 1998 when the PNC took to the streets of Guyana, not just to protest the election of Mrs. Janet Jagan to the Presidency of Guyana, but in so doing, to demonize a woman who had done so much for this country.
When I saw the protestors beating a white doll, it became one of the few times when I was truly ashamed of being a Guyanese. When I saw the venom that was spewed against an old woman who had done more for this country than most, I was deeply ashamed of what the politics of my country had produced because I believe there could be no justification for the demonizing of this woman who has to be one of the architects of Guyana’s freedom.

Yet despite the nastiness that greeted her election and her one year as President, I did not hear any female organization condemn the way she was treated. And this deepened my shame about my country.
Yet in all of this she faced her tormentors with a quiet dignity and never once attacked them. I can understand how she must have felt. But through it all she never revolted. It was a measure of her strength that she faced it all with her characteristic indomitable spirit.
It was that fighting spirit that was first noticed locally when she came to these shores with her young and dashing husband. Dr. Cheddi Jagan. She immediately became part of the political struggles of this country by taking a leading role in the fights against her own people, all in the name of the liberation of the Guyanese people.

For years after her husband was cheated out of power she continued that struggle, never once complaining about the deprivations and sacrifices which she was asked to bear. For years, the bourgeoisie class which is now so prominent in wooing her party, wanted to have nothing to do with the PPP and with Mrs. Jagan.
Yet, in 1997 when she became President they wanted to be around her. Yet again, however, they failed to chastise the PNC for the nastiness they showed towards this woman who has been a citizen of Guyana longer than most of us have been alive.

I still recall the day when she was to make her first address to the parliament of Guyana as President. I saw the mockery that greeted her procession. A man even stood in the middle of the road and tossed a rock at her car. I think in the end she knew that the PNC supporters would not allow her to exercise that which she had long earned: the right to become the President of a country which she had taken to be her home.
If there is a sense of bitterness in what has been written in this column, it is deliberate. All Guyanese should feel ashamed of the manner in which Mrs. Janet Jagan was treated by this country for which she gave her entire life.

The least we can do to honour this great woman – and yes, she is a great woman – would be to grant her in death what she never got in life. She deserves to be remembered as a national heroine who gave far more than she got from this country.

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RESPECT IS DUE TO MRS. JAGAN

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