Something my brother did for Mrs. Jagan

May 16, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There needs to be some comments on two poignant perspectives on Mrs. Janet Jagan in the Stabroek News of March 30. These two analytical adumbrations are very important in filling the gaps in Guyanese history. One is contained in the paper’s editorial, the other by Dr. Cary Fraser in the column, “In the Diaspora.”
First, the editorial. It says “…Mrs. Jagan and her party were never able to overcome the paradox between the quest for fundamental human rights in this country with their silence on the flagellation of those exact rights in the satellites of the Soviet empire particularly Hungary in 1965, Czechoslovakia, 1968, and certainly modern day Cuba.”
No decent, honest human being should ever ignore this huge fault in the politics of Mrs. Jagan and her husband. It can be interpreted as the semi-fascist embrace of communist dictatorship. It is extreme incomprehensibility.
Both Cheddi and Mrs. Jagan went around the globe begging the world to pressure Forbes Burnham to let Guyana have free and fair elections. Yet these two politicians shamelessly upheld Castro’s dictatorial abrogation of that very process in Cuba. How can any intellectually broad-minded person admire Cheddi and Janet Jagan when you consider this downright, insensitive act of support for fascism in Cuba?
There is only one explanation. Janet and Cheddi Jagan at a conceptual level didn’t really believe in free and fair elections but saw that particular process in Guyana as one that would have allowed them both to come to power as it did for Dr. Jagan in 1992 and Mrs. Jagan in 1997.
Mrs. Jagan told one of her interviewers that she threw away the court order because she saw it as a way of cheating the PPP out of the election it had won. Which election Castro ever allowed? How can one not highlight this immense mistake in Mrs. Jagan’s biography (when it is written) when the facts show that she was so shameless about her embrace for Castro who does not believe in free and fair elections?
Dr. Fraser wrote; “Even as the PPP complained about the lack of democracy and free and fair elections in Guyana after 1964, its own internal politics of representation and democracy provided no assurance that there was respect for intellectual pluralism as a guiding principle…any assessment of Janet Jagan‘s political legacy will require a fuller examination of her role in creating and sustaining this culture within the party from its inception.”
These two insights are useful angles on Guyanese history that all of our people whether in or out of Guyana need to remember always. It is the tragic story of Janet and Cheddi Jagan. Guyanese must understand the situational roots (as opposed to the derivatives) of Forbes Burnham’s drift into authoritarianism.
Burnham had no respect for the lofty ideals Janet and Cheddi Jagan espoused. He knew they didn’t believe in democracy, fixed their internal elections and conspired to oust free thinkers within the leadership of the PPP. Mrs. Jagan was the chief “backdoor fixer” of things in the PPP.
Cheddi would complain to her and she would pull out the knives. Read what Lloyd Best, Moses Bhagwan and others had to say about her in the book, “The PPP of Guyana: An Oral History, 1950-1992.” Here is a brief quote from one of the most admired academics, political activists and Caribbean personalities –Lloyd Best – on Mrs. Jagan, taken from that same book: “Janet was a bad influence on Cheddi…she was a person who believed that if you were not for me, then you were against me.”
This was the essence of the lady until her death. The story of Janet and Cheddi Jagan must be told to the present and coming generations. She was no saint; far from it, she did terrible things that contributed to the misery of this nation.
Now that Mrs Jagan is dead, I will fill a huge gap in Guyanese history by revealing what my brother did on her direct order when he was a violent PPP youth between 1960-1964. I couldn’t write about it once my brother “Lightweight” Kissoon and Janet Jagan were alive.
I could do it now because they are both dead. I think I owe the Guyanese people this obligation to let them know what the true threads of their country’s history are. What I have to say will shock every Guyanese in and out of this land. My brother confessed it to my mother. My mother told it to me. I raised it with my brother. I accepted his explanation but I didn’t accept the rightness of the act.
I still don’t.

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