It was the mistakes of the WPA that were fatal to the building of a progressive alliance

Dear Editor,

I wish to clarify some aspects of Mr Ogunseye’s assertions in his letter of July 7 (‘After meeting State Department officials Jagan had no more interest in a PCD agreement to contest elections’).

Mr Ogunseye’s innuendo that the US warned off Jagan from a PCD government, and that Jagan took the warning, is fanciful. By then the US had been prepared to accept the PPP. Why would it not have been prepared to accept a PPP/WPA/DLM alliance? By that time both the WPA and DLM were known to be small, weak, largely ineffectual and certainly not anti-American or posing any threat to the US. Also, the US knew that whoever came to power, Guyana was trapped in the Washington consensus and IMF programme, with no socialist solidarity available.

As against the innuendoes proposed by Mr Ogunseye (Jagan’s visit to the US being linked to the breakdown of negotiations with the PCD; Jagan whispering a message to Ogunseye for the WPA leadership; Nagamootoo taking over the negotiations in the PCD; electoral concessions from the WPA linked to the alleged withdrawal of the offer to Professor Thomas), the facts on the ground were that a formula for the list of candidates and post-election distribution of seats could not be agreed. Later, when Jagan was still determined to encourage WPA cooperation by inviting Professor Thomas to serve in the government, the WPA stalled.

The perversities that the WPA has persistently accused the early 1990s PPP of are here exposed to be conclusions based on baseless and far-fetched suspicions and innuendoes. This is the unscientific pattern of much of the analysis of the Jagan PPP by the WPA.

It is the mistakes of the WPA, its talented leadership and activist core making up for its modest support, that were fatal to the building of a vibrant, liberal and progressive alliance and the emergence of a different kind of politics and post-Jagan PPP. History’s broader sweep, after sifting the conspiracy theories advanced as analyses by Mr Ogunseye, will so record.

But Mr Ogunseye and others appear to be trapped in a narrative dedicated to blaming the PPP for the breakdown of the talks in the early 1990s and demonstrating that the WPA was the aggrieved party to, maybe, explain its subsequent alliances. It is an unrelenting effort to bend the arc of history from its inevitable trajectory and conclusions.

It is wholly inaccurate to suggest that the PPP had to rely on the WPA’s support to obtain an absolute majority in the National Assembly. An examination of the evidence will reveal this.

Yours faithfully,

Ralph Ramkarran