What if? A picture painted from the MI5 files

Aug 31, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Reading the MI5 files released on Guyana, I decided to explore what Guyana would have looked like if the PPP won the election outright in 1964. Guyana got PNC dictatorship and economic destruction after the 1964 election. A PPP win in 1964 would not have been any better. The US would have never allowed the rigidly communist Jagans (Janet Jagan in particular) to establish a government. Firstly, the British would have suspended the constitution and dismissed the government like they did in 1953.
The British would not have given independence to the PPP and it would have retained control of Guyana ostensibly to give the West the opportunity to try to destabilize the PPP. Secondly, it is very likely that the Americans and British would have attempted to overthrow the PPP communist government. The US would never have allowed another Cuba. Overthrowing the PPP government could have come by trying a military coup.
It was achievable since the military in 1964 was pro-British and many elements supported the PNC. Following the military coup, a military leader or Forbes Burnham or Peter D’Aguiar would have likely been appointed Prime Minister in an interim government. Given Burnham’s power-hungry ways, he would have likely attempted to position himself to reap the benefits of any coup against the PPP government after 1964.
Thirdly, if the option of a military coup did not exist and the PPP could not be removed and the PPP decided to fight the destabilization efforts of the West, it is likely that the country would have descended into civil war. It is difficult to see how the Jagans would have easily yielded to the West after winning their dream of a communist state.
Because it lacked military support, the PPP would have likely aligned itself with communist and leftist movements from Latin America for military support in order to fight the destabilization attempts. A civil war along race and ideology would have commenced and eventually decimated this country.
Fourthly, there is the issue of territorial sovereignty. In the midst of a civil war or of efforts to stop the PPP government, Guyana cannot maintain territorial integrity. Our neighbours in the 1960s in Brazil, Venezuela and Suriname were all US-backed regimes. Suriname was still under the control of the Netherlands, a clear supporter of the West. The
Americans would have encouraged those countries to claim a newly independent Guyana’s territory to weaken the hold of the PPP’s communist regime.
In any event, Venezuela and Suriname would have likely pressed their claims to Guyana’s territory and attempted some form of invasion while the country is consumed by civil war and infighting.
Some areas such as the Rupununi would have seriously considered breaking away to form independent states. It is highly likely that Guyana would have shrunk significantly in size by the late 1960s after these incursions against its territory. With PPP and PNC forces concentrated in Berbice and Georgetown respectively and locked in battle and with no central army to hold territory, our neighbours would have taken huge slices of our country.
Fifthly, if for some fanciful reason the PNC, the British and the Americans accepted the PPP government in an independent Guyana, Guyana would have likely gotten communist dictatorship under the PPP.
With the possibility like it happened in 1964 that it cannot win an outright majority and the fear of electoral interference, rigging and significant sums spent by the Americans on propaganda during elections, the PPP would have likely taken the Burnham route and rigged elections or suspended elections indefinitely in response.
Sixthly, a communist government under the PPP would have faced tremendous economic pressure and strangulation by the Americans and the British. Embargoes, no aid from the West and the loss of trading partners and markets in the Caribbean and the West would have crippled Guyana. Guyana would have been forced to starve by Western nations.
Even the communist bloc would not have wanted our goods when they could be obtained at cheaper prices from other communist countries and were produced in those countries at cheaper prices and with greater efficiency and productivity. Furthermore, the reality that approximately one-half of the country did not support the PPP’s communist government would have meant that only one-half of the country that supported the PPP would have been tasked with keeping the government afloat.
It would have been all too much. Guyana would have suffered human resources flight and the same brain drain as happened under the PNC. The exodus of PPP supporters under the PPP since 1992 pointedly shows that people will run from misery regardless of political allegiance. Seventh, political pressure, loss of territory, economic pressures and mass exodus of Guyanese including PPP supporters would have crippled the PPP. It did not matter who won in 1964. We would have suffered similar fates either way.
A PNC or a PPP win would have delivered hardship and suffering to Guyana. We had three individuals who lusted after power in Cheddi Jagan, Janet Jagan and Forbes Burnham albeit for different reasons.
The Jagans wanted power to establish their dreamed communist state in defiance to the West. Burnham wanted power because he just wanted total power. When one carefully examines the realities of the world at that time, we would have gotten socialist dictatorship under the PNC or communist dictatorship and civil war under the PPP.
The PPP could not pursue civil war in 1964 after it lost the election because it lacked the legitimacy to do so given that it lost. The communist bloc did not care about Guyana and they were hardly prepared to support a communist party that lost an election to a socialist dominated coalition. Now, if the PPP achieved a majority in 1964 it would have resulted in the distinct possibilities of communist dictatorship, civil war or overthrow of the PPP government.
The only possible silver lining that would have emerged from the PPP winning in 1964 would have been the case of Peter D’Aguiar. If the PPP won and formed a communist government in 1964 and the West overthrew it, the West would have held the entire puppet strings to Guyana. With all the power in the hands of the West, it is highly likely that the Americans would have seriously reassessed Forbes Burnham and the British warnings of Burnham’s naked lust for power and their knowledge of Burnham’s strong socialist leanings.
Heeding those warnings would have likely resulted in the West installing in Guyana, similarly to Brazil and Venezuela, a military government headed by a military council with a civilian government managing the daily affairs of the country. With Burnham ruled out from running a puppet regime, Peter D’Aguiar would have likely become the puppet leader of Guyana after the PPP was overthrown in 1964 or shortly thereafter. We all know D’Aguiar’s business acumen.
Like the British did when it supported the interim government from 1953 to 1957 when the PPP was kicked out from power, the Americans and the West would have thrown immense sums of money at this staunchly capitalist puppet government headed by D’Aguiar. Money in the hands of Peter D’Aguiar would have meant the emergence of a powerful capitalist economy in Guyana.
By the time communism falls into its own disastrous mess in the early 1990s, Guyana would have been a fully capitalist and likely developed country already prepared for the change that was to come. That would have been supremely better than a collapsed socialist state or a wrecked communist state under the PNC or the PPP.
Guyana was a country that was made for capitalism. From the time African slaves bought their own villages and started markets and farms to the time Indian indentured servants bought lands they were indentured on in the search of betterment, we knew we had capitalism in our blood. Forbes Burnham and Cheddi Jagan disbelieved in us. They rejected our idealism. They never listened to us and to our yearnings.
They wanted to copy and plant a foreign ideology that someone else created because of the peculiar problems of his particular society. We may not have liked D’Aguiar or his ideology or his philosophy or his choosing the West over the Communists but Banks DIH is still churning out profits year after year while the PNC and the PPP have delivered yearly monumental losses upon this country.
Finally, I must say this: those who chose the West during the Cold War, chose right. The West ended up on the right side of history while Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham ended up on the wrong side of history leaving their people in utter devastation.
Say what you want about the West but it did not only talk a good ideology like the good old communist boys, it also put its money where its mouth was. And lots of money too.
The MI5 files noted that the communist bloc did not provide any financial support to the PPP. That was typical of the comrades. They gave ideology, delivered rhetoric and installed fanciful ideas in the heads of the Jagdeos, Ramotars, Corbins and Grangers of this world but they never gave money to build anything of substance and accomplished nothing but misery. The election in 2011 is about two sets of comrades and their ideas. Good luck voting.
M. Maxwell

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