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What legacy?

May 08, 2018 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The PPPC has been accused of departing from the legacy of Cheddi Jagan? What is this legacy that people speak of?
Cheddi Jagan was Premier of Guyana during colonial Guyana. He was the father of the independence and nationalist movement. He never led Guyana to Independence.
The nationalist movement split under his leadership. For that he must not be faulted because everyone knows, though not everyone concedes, who was responsible for splitting the nationalist movement and by implication, working class unity.
Cheddi Jagan had a torrid time as Premier, particularly between 1961 and 1964 when British and American imperialism and their lackeys unleashed a campaign of violence and destabilization against his government which eventually led to the PPPC being ousted from government in 1964.
For twenty-eight years Jagan toiled away in the political wilderness, always cheated but never defeated. In 1992 when the democratic winds swept the world, he was once again restored to power but died without completing a full term in office.
One has to therefore ask: Just what legacy are we dealing with when it is contended that the PPP has strayed from the legacy of Jagan? He had no time to build a legacy in his incomplete term that commenced in the latter part of 1992. What legacy could he have built in such a short period?
He spent the greater part of his political life out of office and therefore if we are speaking of his legacy, it can hardly be about his time as President between 1992 to when he died. The legacy therefore has to be the completeness of his political life both in and out of office.
He was known as a frugal man. He has rightly been described as an anti-racialist. But his greatest and unquestionable commitment has been to the working class of this country. Jagan was a man of ideals. He was also a man of the working class.
When people therefore claim that the PPP has strayed from the legacy of Jagan, they can only mean one thing, and one thing alone: the party has strayed firstly from his ideals, and secondly that the party has strayed from the working class.
In making a case that the PPPC has strayed from the ideals of Cheddi Jagan, reference is often made to the fact that the present leaders of the PPP do not practice the so-called simple and frugal lifestyle of Cheddi.
Cheddi, we are told, lived in a simple house. Well, everything in life is relative and by the standards of his day, the house that Cheddi lived in was not that working class at all. By today’s standards of course it is. The area where he lived may have started out as swampland, but by the mid 1970’s the area was considered an upscale area. Cheddi in fact never really lived amongst the working class.
When he came back to Guyana he settled in a middle class area in Queenstown with his wife. But this does not mean that he had bourgeoisie tendencies. It also does not detract from his unwavering commitment to the working class of this country.
And this is the point that was being made many years ago at Babu Jaan. It was not an attempt to compare Jagan’s house with any other person’s mansion. There can be no comparison with these two. There can be no comparison with the company kept. There can be no comparison about lifestyles.
The point being made was Cheddi lived in an upscale area. But the fact that he lived there did not take away from what he stood for politically. It did not mean he could not struggle for the working class. He did continue to struggle for the working class.
The point being made is that we should not judge a man by where he lives – and by extension, by the size and opulence of his house – but by the things he stands for. I suppose, however, if one lives in opulence this has to be factored into what a man stands for.
In the context of the legacy of Cheddi, however, the more relevant question is whether the present crop of PPP leaders share the same ideals and zeal about the working class as Cheddi did; whether they are made of the same stuff as Cheddi or whether they have strayed completely from the working class and are now simply crony capitalists.
The answer to that question will help you decide whether Cheddi’s legacy is being trampled upon.

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