Sexual politics then and now

Mar 27, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

After he lost power in 1964, Dr. Cheddi Jagan wrote his memoirs which he mischievously named, “The West on Trial.” I say mischievously because by looking at the title, one would immediately conjure up vision of a radical Third World leader trying to develop a poor nation against the world great powers and imperialism stopped him. The person that glanced at the title would not know that the West that Jagan put on trial was involved in a Cold War drama in British Guiana with Dr. Jagan shamelessly taking sides.
So he put the West on trial but not Soviet hegemony, which overran Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Looking at the caption of Dr. Jagan’s memoirs, the reader would never believe that in 1950, in an interview with a high school student, in his school magazine, “Lictor,” Dr. Jagan who put the West on trial was overflowing in his praise of Joseph Stalin.
It still boggles the mind why in the sixties, a Third World leader would see Joseph Stalin as a role model. Equally deceiving too is the fact that this leader that put the West on trial was no peach while in power.
The “West on Trial” was a massive denial of all the venalities committed by the government of Premier Jagan with blame being put on the opposition for all the atrocities committed against critics of the PPP in the sixties by Premier Jagan’s party itself.
In 2013 when you look back at the descriptions in the “West on Trial”, you can vividly see that from 1956 when the PPP came to power to 1964 when the party lost it, the exercise of power by the PPP is uncannily identical in the 21st century.
If you believe in the supernatural then it is easy to conclude that the ghost that drove the PPP to commit political suicide from 1956 to 1964 is the same ghost that has taken complete control of Freedom House from 1992 to 2013.
The commission of the crimes in the sixties and their explanations are identical with what currently obtains. If any organization is unchanging and has learnt nothing from history it is the PPP. The PPP Government banned “Kit” Nascimento from press conferences back then. Fifty years later, the same thing happened to Gordon Moseley.
The Kaldor Budget was denounced as harsh on the urban proletariat. The essential criticism against Premier Jagan was that he was insensitive to the urban working class. The exact criticism has been made against the PPP Government today. The policy of excluding Guyanese labourers from the Marriott construction is strongly reminiscent of the mountain of mistakes in relation to labour policies of Premier Jagan in the sixties.
Sex was never far from the mind of the PPP planners when they attacked their critics in the sixties. That stratagem is very much alive today. The case of Peter Taylor, editor of the Daily Argosy, will take a prominent place on the front page of the alternative publication to “The West on Trial.”
Taylor was a relentless pursuer of Premier Jagan’s Government. The attempt on his life ordered by the PPP (at a later date, I don’t know when, I will name the PPP leader that ordered the hit and the relative of mine that went to kill Taylor) was put down by Premier Jagan’s Government as a jealous act by Taylor’s wife when she found that he was cheating on her.
In 2010, I was attacked around 20.00 hours and a miasmic substance thrown on me. It was public knowledge who the perpetrators were. But the very night, just seconds after the attack, NCN said it was the work of a father who reacted against my overtures to his daughter.
The Chronicle repeated the same allegation the next day. Despite a permanent hurricane of poison against me, the PPP and its Government have never even sought an interview with the father and/or his daughter.
The man and his daughter just disappeared the next day and are never to be seen again. A Government that hates me refuses to put on display for the Guyanese population the man and his daughter and their story of Freddie Kissoon. They can’t. They don’t exist. It was the Peter Taylor drama all over again fifty years after Taylor almost lost his life.
Decades after returning to power, the PPP remains its pristine self – a political party that is beyond redemption.

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