Guyana’s Independence and Dr. Jagan’s legacy 

IT IS quite appropriate, as Guyanese at home and abroad celebrate in varying fashion Guyana’s 48th anniversary of Independence from Britain, that there should also be some reflection on the life and times of the politician who has been most consistent and courageous in his struggles for nationhood – Dr. Cheddi B. Jagan.

And by a significant coincidence, the long-serving Prime Minister of a freely-elected government since October 1992, Mr. Samuel Hinds, has been doing his own personal assessment of the outstanding contributions by the late Guyanese President for “national unity and national development”. They are contributions that could be appreciated by the various segments of this nation — irrespective of political or cultural affinities.

As perhaps the best known leading member of the category of “civic” Guyanese nationals to have been identified and encouraged to become involved with the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) in the formation of the first freely elected government in 1992 — after 24 years of documented rigged national elections — the Prime Minister is well placed to make his assessment of Dr. Jagan’s legendary qualities as a politician committed to what’s best for Guyana — “national unity and national development”.

Indeed, those were the Prime Minister’s twin focus when he recently delivered the ‘Annual Cheddi Jagan Lecture” at ‘The Cheddi Jagan Research Centre’. The building was once known as the ‘Red House’ in Kingston, where Dr Jagan and his dear life partner, Janet, lived while he served as Premier and she in varying cabinet roles.

Together, their names are indelibly inscribed in Guyana’s long and often tumultuous political struggles from colonialism to Independence and beyond Republican status, both having served as Executive Presidents.

However, given space constraint in this editorial column, we shall focus today on just some highlights of Prime Minister Hinds’ moving, eloquent reflections on the contributions of Dr. Cheddi Jagan to Guyana’s “national unity and national development” These, the Prime Minister correctly noted, “are concerns of every nation at all times…”

His encapsulated assessments of the late President Jagan — a founder and leader of the PPP until his death on March 6, 1997 — included snapshots of “Cheddi’s early days”, as a student of Queen’s College, and on to his teaming up with the late PNC leader and subsequent President, Mr. Forbes Burnham, and including a comparatively short period of their dual involvement in the leadership structure of the PPP.

Incidentally, while — as history records — to Forbes Burnham went the “Independence prize for which Cheddi Jagan had so valiantly and consistently fought in and out of office, there was that memorable and cherished political moment when the two national leaders warmly embraced at the National Park on the night of May 26, 1966, when the Golden Arrowhead replaced the Union Jack as the national flag.

Prime Minister Hinds’ reflections also pointed to what he recalled as Dr. Jagan’s contributions in “knitting together like a quilt a nation from six races” of ethnic groups, from “the split of the PPP in 1955” to his last days in the country to which he had so fully committed his life with or without political power.

Hinds discussed the political period when the then British Government chose to facilitate a change in government following the 1964 general election under the PR system. The coalition administration, as recalled, involved the PNC and United Force, under Burnham’s leadership as Prime Minister.

That was, as Guyanese came to understand, the externally orchestrated political deal, rather than doing what was viewed as morally just and in accordance with constitutional precedents —request of Dr. Jagan, as leader of the majority party (PPP) and then still Premier, to head a new post-December 1964 coalition administration.

Against the backdrop of what he described as “a sorely testing time (1964-1992), with the PPP’s return to government following the first free and fair national elections since 1964, Mr. Hinds was to become President Jagan’s “civic” nominee as Prime Minister of the first PPP/Civic government, a position he has retained under changing administrations for some 21 years.

extracted from the Guyana Chronicle