Today’s date has become an obscure footnote

Oct 05, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I am not a fan or admirer of President Forbes Burnham. I believe he threw away the immense opportunities and colossal latitude he had in making this country the best in the Caribbean, one of the best in the Third World and a wonder territory in general. But as an academic I will used my pen against any vulgar, scholarly endeavour to juxtapose him against Cheddi Jagan to make Jagan the good guy and Burnham the bad figure.
Cheddi Jagan was no great leader. If Burnham was authoritarian in power, Jagan was terrible as a Premier and President. Today marks the anniversary of his reclamation of power in 1992. Even African Guyanese and PNC supporters were in emotional embrace of Jagan on October 5, 1992. Guyanese people wanted to give Jagan a chance. Black people voted in 1992 for the PNC but once Jagan became President, the emotion around Guyana was it was his time, it had come, give him a chance to govern.
Jagan disappointed the world not only Guyanese. As soon as he got into office on October 5, 1992, Jagan walked on the rule of law. What happened with employees at Customs and Excise and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was extremely lawless. Cheddi Jagan ran a lawless state from 1992 until he died.
I sat next to attorney, Gino Persaud at a wake on Monday night and this I said to Gino; our troubles, traumas and tribulations in today’s Guyana go back directly to Jagan’s obsessive refusal to encapsulate in the PPP a legal and politically elected deputy. Jagan did not want that.
When he died, there was pandemonium similar to what happened on the death bed of Prime Minister Eric Williams in Trinidad. There was no designated deputy Prime Minister and a big fight broke out. Williams’s protégés had to settle for unknown name.
When Jagan died, Mrs. Jagan just moved in and decided whom she would elevate, demote, sideline and decapitate. Her semi-fascist instincts (I always argue that she was the most insensitive and unconscionable politician this country produced) birthed the presidency of Bharrat Jagdeo. Mr. Jagdeo has singlehandedly destroyed this nation.
I believe Yesu Persaud is a Guyanese hero and I will always respect two descriptions he gave me about President Cheddi Jagan. The first one I have repeated three times in these columns. This will be the fourth occasion. Yesu said that at a small, private gathering of businessmen at the Nandy Park home of Dr. Moti Lall of the PPP, President Jagan was asked if he will change the constitution quickly to reduce the dictatorial powers the President has.
Jagan told them that was not a priority because he, Jagan would never be a dictator.
Jagan said that for two reasons. He wanted that power and he wanted that power for the next PPP President. Jagan got his wishes. His wife made Jagdeo the President and Jagdeo enjoyed those dictatorial powers. The second example I noted two times before in my columns. Persaud said that in his capacity of Chairman of the Private Sector, President Jagan requested a list of names of young people the State would like to employ to utilize their skills and education. Jagan did not select any name that was associated with the WPA or organizations that were not close to the PPP.
Then there was the lowest point of October 5, 1992. It was the ostracization of the WPA. Anyone who lived in Guyana from 1970 to 1980 would have intimate knowledge of which leader and which organization weakened Burnham’s autocracy. The WPA was far more active that the PPP. When Jagan became president, the WPA for him became a thing of the past. Today October 5, 1992 which marks the end of PNC rule and the beginning of free and fair elections has faded into history. It has become an obscure footnote in the history of this country.
Historians will mention that date in their books but it is doubtful if elongated analysis will follow. The date might just be mentioned in passing and that is all the treatment the historian will give it. That is regrettable. Cheddi Jagan held out so much promise to Guyana after he lost power in 1964.
As Burnham became authoritarian, Jagan’s popularity rose to towering heights. The expectations of him on October 5, 1992 were mountainous. But Jagan and the PPP could not have risen to the occasion. He died in 1997 but the dreams of October 5, 1992 had died earlier. The failure of October 5, 1992 will always remain a too painful Guyanese tragedy.

2 thoughts on “Today’s date has become an obscure footnote”

casada11 October 5, 2016 at 8:03 am

Political views should not be solely rested on leadership personalities it should rather have more to do with policies, and those are based on the political party’s manifesto, And that we are all so guilty of embracing to our own detriment, one time or the other.
Gtloyal October 5, 2016 at 11:33 am

The mere fact that we expected so much from Cheddi Jagan and the PPP in ’92 just goes to show the limitations of the Guyanese mentality throughout our history. We couldn’t see then, nor can we see now, further than our noses. That’s why we have a government that again rode to victory on the electoral promise of fulfilling our expectations but is today proving to be no different from those of the past … but we keep on being nourished by those expectations.