The founder of Guyana's freedom. Don't take your freedom for granted. Don't curse your country. Don't be a traitor and speak ill of the country of your birth - Dr. Cheddi B. Jagan
Nadiraâs nadir
It must have been the lowest point in her expectation of the performance of the protÃĐgÃĐs her parents left in charge of Guyana when Nadira, the daughter of the Jagans denounced the lifestyle and low standards of the present leaders of her parentsâ party.
Here are the words of Mrs. Nadira Jagan-Brancier that though welcomed, have to be contextualized. She said; âMy parentsâ honesty and integrity were of very high standards but unfortunately do not exist or I donât see it in many of the leaders of the party and government.â It is doubtful that her words would change anything.
The party her parents left is a practising governmental dictatorship worse than anything her parents fought against both in colonial times and against the PNC under its founder Forbes Burnham.
But the question that begs to be answered is, if she had spoken out earlier could she have affected changes? It is the second question that must be asked; why did she wait so long and after the 2011 election to speak out?
Like her brother, Nadira Jaganâs outspokenness has a convenient twist to it. Her brother regaled the viewers of CNS channel 6 with years of PPP denunciation. Then when faced with a resurgent PNC and a dynamic third party, the AFC in an election battle where his parentsâ outfit looked set to lose, he jumped ship and not only crawled back into the cocoon from which he evolved but went on to engage in personal mud-slinging against a virtual Guyanese institution, Moses Nagamootoo.
Nadira Jagan could not have been so blind as not to see how kleptocratic, depraved and criminal her parentsâ protÃĐgÃĐs were. Her mother had to tell her about it.
Her mother went into the home of a certain Minister in Pradoville just three years after the PPP came to power. When she saw the resplendence, she walked right out. She knew the woman she nurtured in the PPP was a terribly corrupt Government Minister. But Mrs. Jagan, at that time the de facto President, did not fire this monster.
Then there was the case of the infamous fence. Mrs. Jagan visited the home in Cummings Lodge of one of her underlings that she literally brought up in her own home, one who was now a Cabinet member. This was again three years after the PPP came to power. When Mrs. Jagan saw the newly constructed fence, she was livid. She said the fence had to cost more than a million dollars.
Mrs. Jagan and Cheddi Jagan in 1995 had come to the conclusion that they reared some Draculas at Freedom House that were happy to suck the blood of the Treasury.
Nadira Jagan should have been at the Critchlow Labour College on Thursday night to hear a budget analysis by Mr. Carl Greenidge.
Speaking on corruption, Mr. Greenidge told his audience that when President Jagan discovered corruption at the highest level at the Ministry of Works, he appointed Mrs. Jagan to investigate and that was the end of the affair.
The point is that Dr. and Mrs. Jagan knew that the government that they fought so hard to win from the PNC had now made the former PNC Government look like a baby in the candy store.
I agree with Nadira Jagan â her parents were not corrupt people, not at all. The same one can say for Presidents Burnham and Hoyte. The PPP did an immense disservice to the family and relatives of Forbes Burnham when they accused the founder of the PNC as being a corrupt President. That was nasty propaganda. Mr. Burnham was too mean a patriot to allow stealing by his Ministers. He would grant you a lease but never title over state lands. He believed Guyanaâs resources should not be in private hands. We all owe Burnham an apology for suggesting that he was a corrupt President. So why did this daughter of two former Guyanese Presidents wait until 2012 to denounce the vultures her parents left in charge of Guyana? Like her brother, she didnât want to take the chance and topple the mango cart before the elections. The PPP is her parentsâ party. Her parentsâ party is in government and that is where she and her brother want it to be. Of course nothing will change. The vultures she denounced will quietly whisper among themselves that she should stay in Canada where she belongs.
In concluding, one would hope that in a quiet moment, this daughter would reflect on the people her parents groomed for all these years. Surely, Dr. and Mrs. Jagan cannot escape blame. They gave Guyana to Bharrat Jagdeo.