Dr. Cheddi Jagan earned his place in history as a political fighter

Mar 25, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I have no problem with anyone, including Mr. Charles Ramson, who thinks “Dr. Jagan was one of the main characters that fought for our independence and the freedoms we enjoy today,” (Kaieteur News, March 23).
In fact, Dr. Jagan has earned his place in Guyana’s political history as a strident fighter for Guyana’s political independence and no one should be allowed to get away with trying to change that. Especially not on his commemorated birth anniversary.
Unfortunately, whatever freedoms he fought for that Guyanese now enjoy, are by no means the only freedoms Guyanese seek to enjoy, even if we do enjoy what others dream of and especially when we still dream of what others enjoy.
If anything, one can rightly ask whether Dr. Jagan would have approved of this PPP Government’s failure to have an FOI Law; failure to open up the radio broadcasting industry; failure to let the independent media do its job without running political interference; failure to reform the police to effectively do its job even against corrupt government officials and failure to reform the judiciary so it can address justice concerns of the people, 17 years after the PPP returned to power.
That said, I read Kaieteur News columnist, Mr. Freddie Kissoon’s piece, “Legacies of power-drunkenness, sexual insanity and unprecedented corruption,” (March 22), referenced by Mr. Ramson, and except for the ‘sexual insanity’ reference that I completely missed in the body of Mr. Kissoon’s column, the impression I got was that Dr. Jagan’s role as leader of the PPP and, by extension, the effectiveness of his leadership of government, was questioned; not his role as a fighter for political independence and freedoms.
And there is a distinct difference between the two roles because I, too, have reached the point where I have been questioning the kind of political leader Dr. Jagan was, especially based on what has been playing out in the PPP and its government since he died. And for doing this, I have had the misfortune of butting heads in the letters column recently with Dr. Jagan’s son, Dr. Joey, who viewed my questioning his father’s obvious failure as a political leader as a put down or denigration of the man.
Anyway, even though I recognise that Mr. Ramson reacted to Mr. Kissoon, I couldn’t help noting that, like Dr. Joey, he thinks criticising or questioning Dr. Jagan’s politics/policies/practices amounted to denigrating or putting down the man. So I am going to ask Mr. Ramson to constructively address four areas where I think Dr. Jagan failed as a political leader.
First, on assumption of office in 1992, Dr. Jagan failed to have his government investigate the PNC’s corruption and others shenanigans during its 28 years in office, not merely to institute criminal charges where necessary, but to hold the PNC publicly accountable for its governance of the country. That palpable failure, which he once said was because of his unwillingness to engage in political witch-hunting, has some Guyanese now wondering if it led to the rise of the shocking ‘ah-we-dis-turn’ acts of corruption in the present PPP Government.
Unfortunately, the PPP, which once slammed the PNC for corruption in government, now has nothing on the PNC when it comes to corruption; if anything, it has taken on the image of a highly organised criminal entity and has even found ways to manipulate the criminal justice system to its benefit by determining who gets prosecuted and who gets merely investigated. Whenever this PPP Government gets booted from office, several investigations will be needed.
Second, Dr. Jagan died in 1997 without leaving behind a viable, comprehensive economic recovery and development plan for his party to execute in government, even though he had 28 years in the wilderness to come back into power with a plan, and five years after returning to power to even come up with one. Shockingly, President Jagdeo inherited a government with no economic master plan from the party, so while he adhered to the World Bank’s stipulations for debt repayment and debt write-offs in helping reduce Guyana’s foreign debt, he had no major economic vision for Guyana and settled for running the country based on foreign loans, foreign grants, foreign remittances and an informal economy fueled by laundered money.
Third, Dr. Jagan died without a comprehensive succession plan in place for the party and government, reportedly handing over responsibility for both to his wife by scribbling his succession instructions on a piece of paper. We have since learned there were major grumblings and even bad blood in the upper echelons of the party over this.
The PPP may have been his to do whatever he liked, but since the government belongs to the people of Guyana, the system for electing government leaders and their successors should have been more transparent for the country to see how the process evolved to produce a successor to the elected leader who died.
The Guyana Government is not a family-run business, and there ought to be no sense of political entitlement.
Fourth, to the best of the nation’s knowledge, Dr. Jagan died an unreformed communist, even though his son, Dr. Joey, said his father saw himself in the image of the Soviet reformer Mikhail Gorbachev.
There is no media report that ever said Dr. Jagan reformed the PPP and the government to bring them in line with the changed ideological landscape of the world after the Soviet Union’s collapse and to take advantage of opportunities for Foreign Direct Investments to help turn around the economy.
As a result, not only are there still communist-oriented leaders in the PPP, but in much the same way Dr. Jagan was ideologically averse to the United States, openly siding with America’s former political foes, (the former Soviet Union, Eastern bloc countries and Cuba), President Jagdeo is currently averse to the United States and has openly sided with Iran, to the extent he has agreed to let Iran map Guyana’s minerals, even though he is well aware that Iran and the United States are engaged in a major showdown over Iran’s apparent quest for nuclear weapons, and that Iran may be seeking uranium to this end.
Why is Guyana always on the wrong side by having leaders who are against America? First it were the Jagans, then Forbes Burnham, and now Jagdeo. America is home to hundreds of thousands of Guyanese, yet it does not have a friend in the Guyana Government?
I close by saying, even if the argument is made that President Jagdeo is entitled to govern as he sees fit, how can his selection to the presidency, itself fraught with very serious leadership questions, not reflect on the political leadership of Dr. Jagan, whose sudden death resulted in President Jagdeo becoming a compromise candidate?
Dr. Jagan knew the mess his government inherited and the humongous task of rebuilding, yet he died without ensuring his successor was a matured and visionary political leader.
Seventeen years after the PPP returned to power, the Guyana economy beckons for major foreign investments, but Jagdeo settled for gambling with the security of Guyana’s economic future by inviting Iran to look for minerals.
And to think that the same party system that produced President Jagan and President Jagdeo could possibly produce another President in 2011! Truly, this is scarier than one can ever imagine!
Emile Mervin

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