Ambassador Odeen Ishmael was well qualified for the job with which he was entrusted - that of presenting a lecture celebrating the life of Dr. Jagan on the occasion of his birth and death anniversaries, both being observed this month. He chose the topic "Cheddi Jagan - Glimpses of an Internationalist".

The lecture was delivered on March 14 at the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre, Georgetown.

The Guyana Ambassador to Washington started off showing Dr. Jagan's struggle for what was then British Guiana to be an independent nation.

On December 30, 1959, he said, Dr. Jagan wrote a letter to political parties, trade union leaders and various organisations the world over soliciting support for Guyana's cause.

Dr. Jagan, Ishmael said, saw the importance of links with Latin America and so a Spanish text of the letter was sent to 60 organisations, prominent individuals, parties, trade unions and universities in the region.

Ishmael quoted the letter in part, which read: " We are demanding that our country should become an independent sovereign state...I take the liberty of soliciting from you a Declaration of Solidarity for our cause".

"Scores" of leaders, including those in the emerging third world, responded, Ishmael recounted.

"This letter showed Dr. Jagan's belief in the significance of international solidarity", he told his audience, that included former President and Dr. Jagan's widow, Mrs. Janet Jagan, Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, Government ministers, People's Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) General Secretary, Mr. Donald Ramotar and members of the Jagan family.

"This growing influence of international solidarity, particularly for the independence struggle in colonial territories in the Americas, Asia and Africa grew in strength from the early 1960's. Guyanese sympathised with South Africans struggling against apartheid, and the apartheid fighters provided the solidarity and support that Guyanese needed," Ishmael said.

He noted that even from his early days, Dr. Jagan followed international affairs very closely and that early in his political career, his views were being reported on in the international press and even in British Parliamentary debates.

In 1951, Dr. Jagan was invited to attend the World Festival of Youth and Students in Berlin.

As he indicated, Ishmael did not go into details about what happened after the 1953 elections when the British Government suspended the Constitution, claiming that the PPP was about to set up a communist dictatorship.

He next spoke of Dr. Jagan's position on the West Indian Federation. He felt that he needed to give some explanation, as he said there have been "gross misrepresentations" on Dr. Jagan's position by some commentators.

Ishmael said that when the PPP was overthrown, the West Indian leadership praised the British Government, and when Dr. Jagan and his partner, Mr. Forbes Burnham, were travelling to London, the governments of Trinidad and Barbados refused to allow them to pass through their airports.

"Naturally, such action soured the relationship between the PPP and the West Indian leaders, but it did not make Dr. Jagan and the PPP become opponents of the idea of federation", he posited.

When Burnham and Jagan split, Ishmael said Burnham's right wing, which had originally supported the PPP position of a referendum to decide entry into the federation after independence was granted, somersaulted on that position.

The Federation was established in January 1958.

According to Ishmael, Burnham moved a motion in the Legislative Council in which he demanded that Guyana unconditionally enter the Federation without first becoming independent.

"Actually, there was a strong move afoot by the British colonial authorities and a number of reactionary Caribbean leaders, many of whom were later to hold leading positions in the Federal Government, to get Guyana by any means in the West Indian Federation.

"The aim behind this plan was to suppress the progressive ideas and policies of the PPP, which stood alone against a multitude of Caribbean reactionary elements who were continuously supporting colonialism and seeing every fighter for independence as a communist", he said.

"He (Burnham) earned the undying gratitude of the reactionary West Indian leadership, which was to give tacit support to the British and American governments in their joint plot to remove the PPP Government in 1964 and for the formation of the pro-imperialist PNC-led coalition Government.

"The reactionary West Indian leadership embraced Burnham and the PNC so closely that it refused to condemn the PNC's successive rigging of elections in Guyana from 1968 to 1985", Ishmael recollected.

According to Ishmael, the PPP was right in the position it took on the Federation, saying that this was vindicated when two-thirds of the registered voters in the Federal territories did not vote in the federal elections, showing that they were apathetic and non-supportive of the colonial status of the Federal Constitution. Even Burnham later changed his position, he noted.

Moving on, Ishmael's lecture focused on how Dr. Jagan expanded his contacts with African liberation leaders, particularly after 1957.

Dr. Jagan, he said, met many of them at the Ghana independence celebrations, and maintained contacts with them via regular letters and subsequent visits to Africa.

"His firm belief in internationalism caused him to appeal to Kwame Nkrumah, the Prime Minister of Ghana, to help re-unite the PPP in 1957", Dr. Ishmael noted.

In 1962, Dr Jagan took the case for the independence of Guyana to the UN Committee on de-colonisation.

From the late 1960's to the early 1990's, Dr. Jagan, Ishmael noted, galvanised international support for the struggle of democracy and was successful in his efforts to have international observers report on the elections in 1973, the referendum in 1978 and the elections in 1980 and 1985.

It was Dr. Jagan's consistency that made former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his Carter Center take note of Guyana and come for the 1992 elections which the PPP/Civic won, making Dr. Jagan President.

Ishmael reported some of the significant meetings Dr. Jagan had in the United States and Latin America as President.

He touched extensively on the Miami Summit of 1994 at which Dr. Jagan first proposed the establishment of a Regional Integration Fund to assist smaller economies of the Americas.

He made mention of the December 1996 Bolivia Inter-American Summit for Sustainable Development, at which Dr. Jagan represented the Caribbean on issues such as the shipment of nuclear waste through the Caribbean Sea and the pressures placed on the banana industry.

"While Dr. Jagan believed very firmly in Caribbean unity, he also saw a continental destiny for Guyana...He was firm on the point that we must become bilingual", he said.

Ishmael continued to develop his theme, telling his listeners that he remembered how, since the 1970's, Dr. Jagan would use large charts with bar-line and pie charts when he lectured on how the debt problem affected Guyana.

"He championed the cause of debt relief all over the world and met personally with world leaders including the Pope to support this cause", the Ambassador related.

As he said he must, Ishmael had to say something about Dr. Jagan's campaign for the New Global Human Order.

The Ambassador said the idea has been publicised widely outside Guyana, but is not well known in Guyana. Already, Ishmael noted, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution of the New Global Human Order last year.

Ishmael noted that Dr. Jagan pursued his philosophy with great passion.

"Even when he was fighting for his life at the Walter Reed Hospital in late February and early March 1997, his faith in international friendship remained. Unable to speak, he could still scribble on a note pad a short note asking about the welfare of his friend, the Prime Minister of Canada, Jean Chretien," Ishmael said.

"When he died on March 6, the world paid tribute to him, and President (Bill) Clinton (of the USA) saluted him, saying that he was a man who always fought for the poor.

'Indeed, he did so, not only for Guyana, but for all the poor people struggling for bread, justice and human liberty all over the world. That was his obligation as a true internationalist," Ambassador Ishmael said.