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At the doorstep of the founder

Mar 04, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The assessments by former PPP insiders that Mr. Jagdeo and other PPP leaders have strayed from the path of Cheddi Jagan go on non-stop. The letters on this theme can be read quite often in both independent dailies.  The cry from all of them is that Dr. Jagan would not have administered the affairs of Guyana in such an uncaring way.
The point missed by these sincere observers is that it was Dr. and Mrs. Jagan that invented, nurtured and shaped the PPP into what it is today. It was this duo that laid out the blueprint with its dos and don’ts for their handpicked protégés
It simply boggles the mind to understand why these dissenters cannot see this. Dr. Jagan’s faults were as large as the British Empire. Simple research will reveal them. Dr. Jagan and Forbes Burnham were flawed leaders that are responsible for the ongoing tragedy that is Guyana.
They were different leaders with different styles but their inner weaknesses destroyed this land. Mr. Burnham seems to be the more vilified while Jagan continues to avoid harsh condemnation. As we dig deeper into the fossilized formations of Guyanese history, revisionism will reveal more positive nuances of Burnham and less flattering descriptions of Dr. Jagan. Such a dénouement is long overdue.
Dr. and Mrs. Jagan surrounded themselves and encouraged the growth of psittaceous news-carriers, sycophantic foot-soldiers and robotic loyalists. The result was internal dictatorship. As the sixties closed, the intelligent and educated elite in the PPP leadership day after day broke with Cheddi Jagan and he went in search of his Pavlovian ramparts. Out of courtesy to their families, we won’t name them but these immature cadres, not known for any indepth reading of anything except their familiarity with liquor, made up the PPP’s hierarchy from 1970 onwards.
By 1992 when power was regained, Dr. Jagan had a pitiful bunch to work with. The result is what we have to live with today.
All those who yearn for “the good old days” of Cheddi Jagan’s stewardship either do not want to know, or conveniently forget that Mr. Jagdeo was not an imposition by the Civics, the PPPites in the Diaspora, the Americans etc. He was the unapologetic choice of Dr. Jagan and his wife.
The dissenters who now say that Dr. Jagan would not do this or that must remember this fact. Let us briefly mention three recent items on Dr. Jagan and we urge our dissenters to look further and dig deeper. On recent pronouncements on the nature of the Civic Component, Dr. Henry Jeffrey said that the people who comprised the Civic Component did not want to formally create an organization because that would have caused some vexation in the PPP leadership.
He was simply saying that Dr. Jagan would not have welcomed such a structure. In other words, Dr. Jagan was happy with the looseness of the Civic Component. It goes back to power as we saw in Burnham.
Secondly, Jinnah Rahman, once charged for treason by the PNC Government, wrote in the February 15 issue of KN that Dr. Jagan summoned and threatened him  that if he didn’t proceed to the USSR to attend ideological training, he could not remain in the Cane Farmers’ Association, a PPP front group.
Thirdly, Mr. Ralph Ramkarran in a recent interview with Mr. Christopher Ram, in response to a question on Mrs. Jagan’s domination of Dr. Jagan rejected the suggestion in its entirety. Mr. Ramkarran was in short pants when Caribbean giant, Dr. Lloyd Best from Trinidad was Premier Jagan’s advisor.
This is what he wrote in Frank Birbalsingh’s “The PPP of Guyana, 1950-1992: An oral History: “I think Janet Jagan was a very bad influence on Cheddi. I don’t think she had any insight into the Guyana complexity, and she was the biggest buttress of Cheddi’s intransigence in Guyana. She was hostile to dissent. In my judgement she was a person who believed if you were not for me, then, you were against me.”
I hope the next time Mr. Ram interviews Mr. Ramkarran, he inquiries of his view on what Lloyd Best wrote. Best was never hostile to Dr. Jagan and remained his friend until his death.
Janet Jagan and Cheddi Jagan were always hostile to dissent in the PPP. They used democratic centralism to silence intellectually independent thought in the PPP. They became admired in Guyana only because Forbes Burnham could not have controlled his lust for power. Had Burnham done otherwise, Guyana would not have been in the mess it is today.

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