Give Mrs. Jagan her due, but remember those who preceded her

May 04, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,

I do not wish to take issue with Mr. Frank Fyffe, whose letters I do take the time to read, since we originally hailed from the same community and understood the ordinary man’s struggles of a particular era, but I have a profound concern about his latest letter, “Janet Jagan was unfairly treated as victim of misconception and misrepresentation,” (Kieteur News, May 3).

I did read his previous letter on Mrs. Jagan, and thought, as with all others who either praised or criticised Mrs. Jagan’s politics, he should have his say.

Sad to say, however, this last letter merely continued in the vein of others before it seeking to highlight the various activities and deeds of Mrs. Jagan, ranging from her leaving Chicago to come to Guyana to help fight for an end to colonialism, to her role in championing rights of women and bauxite workers (I suppose we can easily throw in sugar workers here, too). There wasn’t anything new in this last letter that manifestly supported the heading, so I am a little disappointed he took the time to write a letter whose body parts did not support the heading.

To everyone who revered, respected or relished the role Mrs. Jagan played in our political history, I think it is fair to say that when it comes to learning what Guyanese thought of Mrs. Jagan, as a politician, we might find there are three basic categories of opinions that could be encountered: 1) those who care deeply, 2) those who disagree deeply, and 2) those who frankly don’t give a damn one way or other!

And this is why I believe we should give space for venting to all who have an opinion on Mrs. Jagan’s politics.

However, when I read a caption that says Mrs. Jagan was ‘unfairly treated and a victim of misconception and mistreatment’, I am looking for clearly defined incidents or cases where this happened, and such cases cannot be related simply to people openly disagreeing with her politics. I heard a lot of nasty stuff, which is not unique to our political culture of ‘cussing and busing out’ with the usual name calling, and I have also vented my disagreements, but as far as I know, that nasty stuff did not make the letters columns.

There are many, including non-Guyanese, who are of the opinion that her longevity in Guyana ’s politics deserves to be applauded, commemorated and emulated; but there also are many, including non-Guyanese, who are of the opinion that her politics helped stymie Guyana ’s chances for tremendous progress back in the 50s and 60s and then after her husband passed in 1997. So the onus is on those who care deeply about her politics to provide convincing case arguments to sway the opinions who deeply disagree or to convert those who frankly don’t give a damn about Mrs. Jagan’s politics; otherwise, the three categories of opinions will remain unchanged.

To Frank, I do understand your outpouring for Mrs. Jagan, but you owe it to your usual respected analyses in letters to give us, critics of Mrs. Jagan’s politics, incidents or case references where most Guyanese can concur with you that she was unfairly treated and a victim of misconception and misrepresentation. And remember, we are living in an era of political enlightenment and not the 50s and 60s when we didn’t know better about people’s political motives and machinations.

Before I close, I want to touch on the constant harping about how Mrs. Jagan left Chicago 60 years ago to fight for Guyana’s freedom and rights. Not because she left Chicago and fought for the rights of any group in Guyana she should be automatically deemed God’s gift to Guyana and undeserving of fair criticism.

That she left overseas of her own volition pales in comparison to the fact that before her thousands of Africans were forcibly shipped like sardines from overseas to then British Guiana to work as slaves and were treated as sub-humans. These people were taken against their will and so they had every right and reason to fight for their freedom and they did, right up until slavery was abolished.

And even after slavery ended, according to Dr. Walter Rodney, they had to carry over their fight or compete for scarce economic resources with Indians who were deliberately brought from overseas to Guyana as indentured servants in larger numbers than freed African slaves to dampen post-slavery agitations.

Then when we consider that in Guyana’s politics today Guyanese vote race, with the racial group that has the larger number voting PPP, it is being used as reason by some blacks to agitate that they are being discriminated against when the PPP has to reward its constituents with jobs and contracts. For some blacks, therefore, it’s like as though the struggle continues.

The only thing worse than fighting for freedom and scarce economic resources mitigated by the arrival of indentured servants, though, was that Africans have long fought the perception deliberately created and propagated by colonialists that they were less than humans, and the impact of that perception is manifested to this day in the reactions of millions around the world to blacks. So, whenever there is talk about sharing out accolades for fighting for freedom and rights in Guyana, we have to keep history in proper perspective and balance so our emotionalism doesn’t get the better of our rationalism.

Bottom line: There were Guyanese men and women, born and killed in Guyana, who also fought for the same rights and on whose shoulders Mrs. Jagan stood in her political fight in Guyana. Many before Mrs. Jagan were killed and buried without a heroic ceremony, without a monument in their commune and without a national archive in which their names and deeds are stored for posterity! Though they were brought from overseas and died without seeing their dreams fulfilled as a free people, we stand as the beneficiaries of their struggles and death and need to always remember them!

Emile Mervin