Ruel Johnson on the RED HOUSE controversy

Jan 01, 2017 Letters

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Dear Editor,
In the wake of the recent controversy over the eviction of the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre from the heritage property that is Red House, I am professionally and personally obligated to provide some clarity on the issues. Firstly, it needs to be made clear that Red House, known otherwise as Kamana Court, had a full history before Dr. Cheddi Jagan resided there as premier in the early to mid-sixties.
While no date is given as to its original construction, the architecture suggest late 19th century and as the scant information provided by the National Trust website informs us, “The Colony of British Guiana acquired the Red House in 1925. Sir Eustace Woolford, a Speaker of the Legislature, was one of the early owners of the house. Between 1925 to1953, numerous Colonial Secretaries resided there. Dr. Cheddi Jagan also lived there from 1961 to 1964 while he served as Premier of British Guiana. Subsequently from 1965 to the early 1990’s the Red House was used as government offices e.g. the Public Service Ministry.”
Its historicity and heritage value were therefore not, as the PPP would have us believe, primarily established by Cheddi Jagan’s short time there but preceded and followed it due to the building’s longevity, its distinctive architecture, and its function as government offices up until the time of the PPP’s coming into office in the early nineties, when it was abandoned as a functional space.  In 2000, a decade after that abandonment, the PPP then comes in to ‘rescue’ the heritage building standing on three lots of prime real estate by repurposing it as a shrine to Jagan’s memory run by a thinly disguised management committee standing in for the PPP, with the staff and utilities paid for by the state.
As is typical of the party, the century-old history of Red House is erased and reduced merely to Jagan’s four years’ residence there (1961-64) and the shoddy establishment of the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre (2000-2016).  By comparison and to offer some perspective, LFS Burnham spent twenty years (1965-1985) residing in Castellani House, the building that now houses the National Art Collection, a property built in the late 1800s by Cesar Castellani.  Were the PNC to appropriate this heritage site and lease it to a thinly disguised front company for 99 years at $12,000 a year and turn it into a shrine for Burnham, the staff costs and bills of which were paid for by taxpayers, it would be offensive to our citizenry as a whole and the PPP would have been up in arms, even had said lease been properly effected.
That established, we can now go on to the legitimacy of the ‘lease’.  At the time of the founding of the CJRC, Red House was already qualified and listed as a national heritage site and therefore subject at all material times, from 1999 onwards, to the management of the National Trust and the provisions of its establishing Act, Cap 20:03, Laws of Guyana, specifically Section 3 (Establishment and Constitution of the National Trust), which begins, ”There is hereby established a body to be known as the National Trust which shall be a body corporate with power to do all things necessary for the purposes of this act except that the National Trust shall not transfer, mortgage, lease, charge or dispose of any land without the approval of the Minister.”
The Attorney-General has rightfully addressed the ‘lease’ as executed under the Lands Department Act, Cap. 59:01 simply because this was the instrument under which control of Red House was supposedly ceded to Cheddi Jagan Research Centre, Inc.  However, in dealing with this issue, the specific provision of Cap 20:03, Sec. 3, and the spirit of the rest of the National Trust Act are what matter since they override any normal course of business with regard to land transfers by it offering specific protection to properties designated as heritage sites.  In brief, Red House and its adjacent lands, being collectively designated a heritage site, could not then and cannot be now leased without express permission from the President or a designated Minister authorizing the National Trust to do so, and any agreement would have to be between the lessee and the Trust as guardian of said property.
I suspect the recognition of this quandary by the principals of the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre is what stymied the formal transfer of ‘ownership’ of the property until 2011, after which the myth of the invincibility of the PPP was laid bare by their only gaining a minority executive.  It should be noted that while Donald Ramotar as CJRC principal would have made application for permission for a lease to Jagdeo (who refused to grant it) in 2006 under Cap. 20:03 Sec 3, he did not himself as President grant that permission to the company CJRC Inc in 2012.
Ruel Johnson
Cultural Policy Advisor
Government of Guyana

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