KEEPING THE FAITH, SECURING THE LEGACY
March 13, 2013, By KNews, Filed Under Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom, Source
This week praises were lavished on the late Venezuelan President Hugo ChÁvez. In Guyana there was even a special event held to pay tribute to this outstanding statesman who died last week.
Those who spoke at the local event had nothing but good things to say about the late Hugo ChÁvez. There was nothing hypocritical about what was being said; it has long been acknowledged in official circles that Guyana enjoyed considerable economic benefits from the ChÁvez government.
In fact it can be said that apart from Cuba, no other government has been as supportive to Guyana as Venezuela has been. How different this is from the past, when the imperialists had tried to set Venezuela against Guyana.
The ChÁvez administration has muffled the “war cries”, and from all indications if the former bus driver that ChÁvez anointed as his successor wins next month’s presidential elections, relations will continue in the same vein.
When you listen to government officials recall the benefits that not only Guyana but the Caribbean enjoyed, it is understandable why there are calls for the Venezuelan leader to be accorded a place in the national pantheon of his country. He deserves a place alongside the great Simon Bolivar. He is one of the great revolutionaries of Latin America and the Caribbean along with Fidel Castro and Cheddi Jagan.
It is shocking today to hear talk that Cheddi Jagan did not have a legacy. That is as uncharitable as it is outrageous. The anti-colonial struggle in Guyana was in a comatose state when Cheddi Jagan returned to Guyana from overseas. He immediately electrified the local political situation with his revolutionary philosophy and actions. There are those who would love to write him out of the script of that period of Guyana’s history but they cannot, because quite simply, without him the British would have held out much longer.
He rocked the foundations of British rule in Guyana and the tremors of his political ideology and activism were felt all the way in Washington where the greatest power on Earth decided that this little man from this little country represented one of the greatest threats to the free world and its economic interests. And so they set about plotting, like they did to ChÁvez, to destroy him.
Cheddi Jagan put Guyana on the political map of the world. There are very few countries in the world in the sixties which got the sort of political attention that Guyana got from the United States and all because of a “subversive”, a true revolutionary called Cheddi Jagan.
So fearful were the Americans of him that they even discussed having him and his wife kidnapped and shunted out to Venezuela. The country at the time then firmly in bed with the imperialists whose agenda then, as it is now, is to serve the interests of their big multinationals that historically have plundered the Third World. Cheddi was opposed to that and was intent on putting an end to it.
He may not have signed Guyana’s instrument of independence, but he remains its architect. And he did other things.
Dr. Cheddi Jagan was instrumental in the formation of the largest union in Guyana and possibly in the Caribbean. This union is still in existence. He also headed the largest mass political party in the English-speaking Caribbean.
Are these not his legacies?
He fought also for twenty-eight years for free and fair elections. Often this fight was alone. The fact that Guyana has been restored to the democratic fold is also part of the legacy of Cheddi Jagan. Which other political leader in the English-speaking Caribbean can boast of such a record?
He was of course dead when Hugo ChÁvez came to power. Had he been around, the imperialists would have been speaking about an axis of evil in the Caribbean, ChÁvez, Castro and Cheddi.
Cheddi Jagan has a legacy. The problem is not the legacy. The problem is in whose hands it was left. Today the government is being accused of abandoning the principles that Cheddi stood for and particularly his historic alignment with the working class.
It was therefore instructive to hear this past week, PPP leaders praising the “transformational” impact ChÁvez had on the poor, both in his country and outside of it. Hugo ChÁvez was committed to ensuring that his country’s resources were taken out of the hands of the domestic and international oligarchies and put to work for the ordinary people.
It is time that the PPP does the same in Guyana. It is time for it to delink itself from that powerful cabal of stinging insects that are carving out of the country for themselves. It is time for the resources of this country to be placed in the hands of the poor.The problem is finding a leader to do that.