What someone did to Jagan another must do to Burnham

Mar 24, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

This week marked a hundred years of the birth of Cheddi jagan. The Stabroek News carried a supplement on the birth anniversary with articles that were outpouring in their angelic descriptions of Jagan. But there was one exception. It was written by a formidable historian, Professor Clem Seecharan
On reading his three page analysis of the obligation to history rather than his subject, Cheddi Jagan was all over the assessment. It was clear to even a schoolboy that Seecharan was writing as a historian and nothing else. Seecharan was not interested solely in the greatness or exclusively on the flaws of Jagan but was writing on the facts of history.
For those who want to know how history should be written, then they should read Seecharan’s account of Jagan’s political evolution in that supplement. Those who continue to write abject nonsense about the superb Jagan, and the great Forbes Burnham should read how Seecharan approaches his subject. I would strongly urge David Granger and Vincent Alexander to stop their glorification of Forbes Burnham and walk the revisionist pathway of Seecharan.
Guyanese scholars who think Cheddi Jagan was Guyana’s greatest gift better start, and quickly too, to analyze Seecharan’s work on Jagan. What this scholar did to the study of Jagan, another scholar needs to do to Burnham”). And what is that? Write as a scholar. (Tyrone Ferguson’s treatment of Burnham was way too light but his book remains the only critical account on Burnham by an African Guyanese scholar; see “To Survive Sensibly Or To Court Heroic Death: Management of Guyana’s Political Economy, 1965- 1985”).
If the Stabroek News editors, when they invited Seecharan to do the piece, thought he would have dished up a panegyric they probably felt confused on reading it but wisely thought of not dropping it.
In looking at some of the flaws of Jagan, Seecharan brought out a horribly shocking revelation about Cheddi Jagan. I remember when there was a death anniversary celebration of Jagan at the National Library, his son, Joey Jagan told the audience that he would slap me for constantly criticising his father.
The Guyana Press Association at the time did the right thing and condemned Jagan Jr. One wonders what Jagan Jr. is going to do when he reads about that particular exposure of Premier Jagan by Seecharan.
Seecharan wrote; “African faith in Jagan’s stature as a national leader was already undermined because the PPP, tactically, decided not to contest six seats in 1961 – paradoxically, in order to help Peter D’Aguiar’s pro-capitalist, rabidly anti-communist UF against Burnham’s PNC. Several of these seats had a significant majority of African voters, but the Indian minority vote that would have gone to the PPP was decisive in the UF’s victory in two of these seats (both in Georgetown).
To Africans (that apart), Jagan was really making a statement that he did not need their suffrage in his pursuit of victory and Independence. Therefore, they could expect no empathy from him as the head of government. But the PNC had the last laugh: they polled 41% of the votes (11 seats) by virtue of the PPP’s not contesting those six seats; the PPP got 42.6% (20 seats). This glaring disparity energised and accelerated the PNC’s campaign for proportional representation.”
It is outside the scope of a newspaper column to elaborate on Seecharan elongation of some of the wrong directions Jagan took but a conspicuous omission in his evaluation is the uncanny hold his wife, Janet Jagan had on her husband. Seechran is writing a book on Jagan, which no doubt will feature the role of Mrs. Jagan in the political life of her husband.
Seecharan is no doubt familiar with Lloyd Best’s assessment (whom Seecharan would have known personally) of the tragic part Mrs. Jagan played in the downfall of Jagan in the sixties and seventies.
We will never know the role Mrs. Jagan orchestrated in the PPP’s no-contest in those eight constituencies but I long suspected Mrs. Jagan of a subtle, invisible dislike for African Guyanese. It may be possible that she preferred D’Aguiar’s party to win more seats than the PNC.
Seecharan dealt at length with Cheddi Jagan’s insensitivity to the feelings of African Guyanese and his refusal to put the ethnic problematic on the agenda for careful study. But given Jagan’s reliance on his wife and given his wife’s reservation about African Guyanese, is it possible that the real decision-maker on the ethnic question in those days was Janet Jagan and not Cheddi Jagan?

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