From Ogunseye to Jagdeo: The story of a tragic nation

May 01, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I wasn’t showing any attention to what my daughter was saying to me. I kept my gaze on the large billboard with Mr. Jagdeo’s face. There was something inside of me that made me sick as I looked at it. I can’t describe it. But I felt it. I felt it deep inside my soul.
As we reached the arrival lounge, my daughter kept chatting away but I wasn’t interested. I kept looking back at Mr. Jagdeo. I don’t know what she was telling me.
My mind was preoccupied with memories of my youthful days with Tacuma Ogunseye and the fantastic courage he showed in the seventies and eighties. I have nothing but pleasant memories of the colossal valour of Tacuma Ogunseye in those times. He remains for me, one of Guyana most admirable freedom fighters. If there is a change of government, I would demand that the nation establish some kind of honour in the name of people like Ogunseye, Clive Thomas, Walter Rodney, Moses Bhagwan, Dr. Josh Ramsammy, Eusi Kwayana, Father Andrew Morrison, and Father Malcolm Rodrigues. We owe them a huge debt.
I don’t know why Ogunseye came into my mind as I watched as that gargantuan billboard at the entrance of the arrival lounge at the Timehri airport where Mr. Jagdeo’s portrait stares at you with the words; “Champion of the Earth.” I guess mentally I went back to the days of cultism under Burnham and how we fought against it.
As your eyes set on Mr. Jagdeo’s image, there was the inevitable question – what has changed in Guyana since people like Ogunseye fought against the politics of cultism thirty-five years ago?
I haven’t been to the airport in a long time so I wasn’t aware of the billboard but there is another structure that went up recently at a spot where I first saw that “Champion of the Earth” sign. Outside the Russian Embassy, at what is commonly referred to as “D’Aguiar’s Turn, there is now erected an equally huge billboard with Mr. Ramotar’s face. I have to pass that way a few times a day since that is the route I take to get to Georgetown.
So what has changed since the era of the personality cult of Forbes Burnham whose rule Tacuma Ogunseye helped to weaken? More importantly, there is the uncomfortable question; why did people like Ogunseye have to confront Burnham in the first place? No one can see into the future so that inquiry should not preoccupy us.
The personality cult that Burnham cultivated was post-colonial pathology and Mr. Jagdeo and the PPP are shamelessly perpetuating that vicious legacy.
Why does Mr. Jagdeo have to have a humongous photograph of his face erected on a billboard at the airport because he got a UN award for the environment? Where is the statue of Barack Obama who copped a more prestigious honour – the Nobel Peace Prize? For sure, if another party wins the forthcoming elections, that structure will come down (I hope some citizens topple it rather than dismantle it).
If the PPP returns, will citizens have to live with that public portrait? What do these things symbolize? The unchanging nature of politics in the post-colonial world.
But shouldn’t people learn the lessons of history? More importantly, shouldn’t Guyanese in particular be sensitive to the re-emergence of dictatorship? We’ve been down that path before. I was there when the personality cult was in full swing. I saw the bravery of Tacuma Ogunseye in the fight against Burnham’s dictatorship.
Today, this man’s restless soul perambulates the pathways of Guyana calling on us to pay attention to dictatorship once more.
Let me be honest with myself. If one cannot be honest with one’s self, a person has no integrity and your relationship with the world becomes a web of self-deception. I honestly cannot condemn Tacuma Ogunseye for what it is alleged he has said at an ACDA public meeting.
If Mr. Ogunseye has advocated that people demand power-sharing after the conclusion of the general elections based on the reality of ethnic divisions, I cannot and will not bring myself to disagree with that advocacy. I believe in it at a very profound level in my mind. The tragedy of this land has persisted for over half a century. It has to come to an end.
All political parties must, as a matter of urgency, declare immediately that if they should, at the individual level, win the election, there will be an inclusion of the losing organizations in a national government. It is the only human formula that will stop this continuing tragedy.

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From Ogunseye to Jagdeo: The story of a tragic nation

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