Saturday, March 8, 1997
By EARL MANMOHAN
GUYANA'S deceased President Dr Cheddi Jagan, 78, had a colourful and exciting
life with more than 50 years of public service to his country.
He was born at Port Mourant, Corentyne on March 22, 1918, the son of indentured
plantation workers. His parents, along with two grand mothers and an uncle,
came to the then British Guiana from Uttar Pradesh, India.
Jagan was educated at Queen's College, Georgetown, Howard University, Washington
DC, Central YMCA College, Chicago and Northwestern University Dental School,
Chicago.
A dentist by profession, he married Janet Rosenberg of Chicago on August
1943, following his graduation. The Jagans have two children, son Cheddi
and daughter Nadiri.
On his return to Georgetown that year, he went into private dental practice,
carrying out his profession for the next 14 years. It was during this period,
a time of British colonial power, he started his career in trade unionism
and politics as a firebrand socialist, organising and spearheading, in 1946,
the formation of the Political Affairs Committee and its bulletin with assistance
from wife Janet.
At the start of his career, the Americans and the British were uneasy about
this Marxist-Leninist dentist known for fiery anti-colonial speeches in
the Guyana sugar belt and under the greenheart rafters of Georgetown buildings.
This concern was so palpable that the Americans once refused him and his
wife a visa to travel to the United States, and British troops saw fit to
oust him in 1953.
In 1947, Jagan was elected a member of the Legislative Assembly and founded
the People's Progressive Party (PPP) in 1950. From 1952-53 he doubled as
a trade union leader, serving as president of the Rice Producers' Association.
The year 1953 was one of his landmark years, heading a PPP-elected government
and serving as Agriculture Minister from April to October.
In April 1953, the PPP won 18 of the 24 seats in the colony's Legislative
Council, but on October 9, the party, with Jagan as leader and the late
Forbes Burnham as chairman, was ousted by the British, who suspended the
then British Guiana Constitution fearing a communist threat.
Jagan and a number of prominent Guyanese, including poet Martin Carter,
were jailed, ostensibly for defying a colonial order restricting movement.
After watching an interim government, appointed by the British governor,
run the country, and Burnham set up his Peoples' National Congress, Jagan
again led his party to convincing electoral victories in 1957 and 1961,
when the country gained internal self-government from Britain.
While preparing for independence in 1962, the country was paralysed by strikes
and political violence, something in which Jagan always charged the US Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) had a hand. As in 1953, British troops were again
called in, but this time with Jagan's support, to restore order.
The British changed the electoral system in 1963, from the popular "first-past-the-past"
to proportional representation. Jagan's party won the largest block of votes
and seats in the 1964 elections, but without an overall majority to form
the government. He was forced out of office by the British, after he refused
to step aside, and a United Force-PNC coalition government installed.
From 1966 to 1973 and 1976 to 1992 he served as Opposition Leader in the
National Assembly.
It was on October 5, 1992, after 28 years in the political wilderness, Jagan
made one of the most remarkable political comebacks, unprecedented in Caribbean
political history by being elected the third President of the Co-operative
Republic of Guyana. Following his election as head of the PPP Civic Government,
political observers in Guyana noted that Jagan was "a changed man".
At 78, he was the last of the "grand old men" to hold power in
the Caribbean Community (Caricom), outlasting as an active politician, gravely
ill ex-Prime Minister Michael Manley of Jamaica and Antigua and Barbuda's
Vere Bird Sr, both of whom have retired from politics.
A CANA report noted on his election that "from the fiery communist
of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the greying East Indian politician today embraces
the free market system".
Political analysts also claimed that Jagan's outlook had softened, against
the backdrop of the collapse of the eastern bloc communist regimes and other
setbacks to the socialist world.
Jagan was also an author. Between 1949 and 1990 he wrote 15 booklets, pamphlets
and papers, while between 1954 and 1984 he authored at least three books,
including The West on Trial: The Fight for Guyana's Freedom.
He was instrumental, too, in calling for the establishment of a Regional
Investment Fund, supported jointly by Caricom and some developed industrial
nations.