Rebellious Woman

Mar 11, 2011 Editorial

Time Magazine’s selection of ex-president Janet Jagan as one of “History’s most rebellious women” confirms the assessment of our editorial following her passing:
When Janet Jagan followed her husband, the newly-minted Dr. Cheddi Jagan, back to Guyana in 1943, the colonial order was as firmly entrenched as ever. At the personal level, the marriage of a white woman to a canecutter’s son from Berbice must have raised many eyebrows – not the least being the family of Dr. Jagan. It was a measure of her adaptability that she soon won over the latter’s trust, if not that of the ruling elite in Georgetown.
The last condition was precipitated by her vigorous and energetic participation in a discussion group in Georgetown that soon morphed into the “Political Action Committee” (PAC) by 1946. Politics up to then had been dominated by ethnic organisations, led by middle class professionals, who in effect pleaded with the Governor for concessions to their cohorts. It does not in any way diminish Dr. Jagan’s contributions to acknowledge Janet’s organisational skills quickly enabled the PAC to develop into an organised political party by 1950.
Her own activism was sparked as a student by the struggle of the US labour movement to gain recognition in the 1930s and 1940s. This movement was very left-oriented and influenced by world communism. Along with Dr. Jagan, she transferred the Marxist analysis of society to colonial Guyana that promised not only a description of conditions but a prescription for action. They captured the imagination of the younger generation around Georgetown and its environs.
While she was unsuccessful in winning the seat from Central Georgetown she contested in the 1947 general elections, the PAC saw Dr. Jagan being successful and therefore had an input into the colonial legislature. Elected to the Georgetown City Council, Janet was a founding member of the PPP in 1950 and was one of the leaders who made submissions to the Waddington Commission in the same year that led to the first general election held under universal franchise in 1953. Janet was responsible for Essequibo and West Demerara. The PPP, of course, was famously victorious at that poll and ushered in the new era of “party” politics. The older politicians and their politics that did not change soon faded from the scene.
Janet lost out in obtaining a ministry due to the machinations of Forbes Burnham but was named deputy speaker of the legislature. After the suspension of the constitution, Janet’s movement were severely restricted but she managed to keep the party groups going through ingenious stratagems. Many persons have forgotten that she was general Secretary of the PPP between 1950 and 1970. In the elections of 1957, she was elected to the Legislature from the Essequibo Coast and became Minister of Labour, Health and Housing. She later became Minister of Home Affairs upon the incumbent’s death in 1963, but resigned from the Cabinet in 1964 in protest over colonial complicity in police inaction during the Wismar violence.
Following the PPP’s ouster from office at the end of 1964, as the party’s representative on the elections commission in 1967, she clashed repeatedly with Desmond Hoyte, the PNC’s representative, over electoral arrangements that were to prove disastrous for the next twenty-four years. She edited the PPP’s newspaper Mirror, from 1973 to 1997. The return of free and fair elections in 1992 saw the PPP victorious and Janet Jagan becoming First Lady. The tragic death of Dr. Jagan in 1997 catapulted her once again into active politics as she was made First Vice President. As the PPP’s Presidential candidate in the general elections later that year, she acceded to the Presidency – the first woman in our history to do so.
The unfortunate protests by the opposition following her victory, in which she was personally targeted and vilified in very racist terms, marked a low point in our political history. She never really recovered from that experience and in 1999 resigned the Presidency after some heart complications.
Time has now vindicated her fidelity to the cause of Guyana.

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