Reflections on Independence
Editorial
Stabroek News
June 19, 2003
Should a referendum be held today to consider the question, “Has the quality of life in Guyana improved since Independence?”, the overwhelming response could be predicted. Most would agree that, although Independence was the single most important event in the last century, both the road leading to it, and its all-too-familiar sequel of the last 37 years, transformed life drastically, and not for the better. Surprisingly, there has been little scholarly writing about those momentous and dangerous days that set Guyana so firmly on the path of self-destructive conflict. The most widely accepted version is based on the Anglo-American intervention in our affairs for ideological reasons. Guyana was one of the Cold War battlefields in which the UK and USA conspired to depose the PPP from office and impose a PNC-UF coalition. Proponents of this interpretation often overlook the fact that the Cold War, like any other war, had belligerents on both sides. Little research is ever done by them into, and less is ever written about, what Cuba and Russia were doing to spread revolution. Others, while accepting the fact of imperial intervention, feel that this merely accelerated an inevitable clash between the two main parties. The roles of trade unions are also often misconstrued. Broadly defined as either pro-PPP or pro-PNC, the specific interests which determined the behaviour of individual unions is often disregarded. Closer study of the concerns of the Man Power Citizens’ Association (MPCA) and the Civil Service Association (CSA), for example, may show more differences than similarities. Yet, some writers tend to treat labour as a homogeneous mass of agitators. International relations in the 1960s, though given exaggerated attention with regard to the roles of the UK and USA, are often misunderstood when it comes to Brazil, the Caribbean, the Netherlands and Venezuela. Guyana’s decision to stay out of the West Indies Federation may have delayed Independence (Jamaica and Trinidad gained theirs when the Federation collapsed in 1962) and disrupted the local independence movement which, in its early stages had chosen association with the Caribbean as one of its principles. Brazil was deeply suspicious of the ideological alignments of political parties here. The Netherlands and Venezuela chose this time to renew their dormant claims to Guyana’s territory. Over the past 40 years, these pre-independence claims have proven remarkably resistant to settlement. The great controversies on power-sharing, the electoral system and constitutional safeguards for minorities are seldom fully explored. Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Trinidad’s Eric Williams pioneered mediation efforts between the PPP and the PNC. Eventually, the PPP boycotted the Independence constitutional conference. As evidenced in the bitter civil wars which erupted in the ethnically-differentiated ex-colonies of Cyprus, Nigeria, (East and West) Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, for example, the British Government was famously unimaginative in framing constitutions to guarantee lasting peace and stability in divided societies once the regiments departed. In 2003, parties in Guyana are still trying desperately to cobble together new constitutional formulae to keep the State from falling apart. These pre-Independence internal conflicts and external aggression disfigured the post-Independence State, contributing to a brain drain, capital flight and economic and political extremism which have eroded the quality of life in Guyana when compared to that in the rest of the Anglophone Caribbean. Research has so far failed to adequately identify and explain the mistakes surrounding Guyana’s troubled path to Independence. A scholarly study of that period may be the present generation’s most valuable bequest to the next.
