A letter that fills one of the many holes in Guyanese history
Freddie Kissoon column
Kaieteur News
February 4, 2007
It was when I grew older and began to interact with profound scholars of the Caribbean that I began to question the contents of Cheddi Jagan's autobiography, “The West on Trial.” I would say my real political awakening began with my integration in the organization founded in Tiger Bay by the name, the Movement Against Oppression. Prior to that, I digested everything that came out of “The West on Trial.”
“The West on Trial” is a book that will mis-educate you if you are not politically mature. It is an account of modern Guyanese political history that is filled with subjective, misplaced, envious, deceptive and downright dishonest interpretations of people that Jagan was either afraid of, didn't like or wanted to vilify.
I learned a few things from the intellectuals I met in the Movement Against Oppression. Then my eyes were opened by the Working People's Alliance . Cheddi Jagan was the leader I thought he was, “The West on Trial” had fooled me.
Some of the accusations made by Cheddi Jagan in “The West on Trial” were either based on malice or mischief because logics did not support Jagan's contentions.
Perhaps the most glaring and egregious example had to do with Mr. Jai Narine Singh. He was a minister in the 1953 government. In his book, Jagan insinuated that Mr. Singh had gone to Venezuela after the British dissolution of the government, where he may have been paid for his political activities.
Yet despite all the communist, anti-imperialist credentials of the PPP, the party that had more wealth than the PNC and any other political organization in the sixties was the PPP. Where did it come from?
In the sixties, the PPP bought a long stretch of prime real estate on Regent Street . It opened an importation firm in one of those properties named GIMPEX. It secured a huge chunk of land in Industrial Site and built a complex to print its Mirror newspaper. It acquired land and a building at Land of Canaan where it opened up a communist training school named Accabre Training College . One former top leader of the PPP also mentioned to me about a fishing trawler the PPP operated clandestinely.
At no time, the PNC resources ever matched those of the PPP. This was a paradox because it was the PNC that was the pro-business party in the sixties while the PPP was the outfit that hated the world of business.
It was logical then for the PNC to be the recipient of general capitalist donors. But paradoxically, it was the PPP that accumulated a vast amount of wealth.
How these resources came about was never mentioned not even in passing in Jagan's popular treatise, “the West on Trial.” But that very book alluded to the wealth-acquiring habit of Jai Narine Singh.
There are more conspicuous contradictions in Jagan's book but to discover them, you have to speak to those that lived in the fifties and sixties. It is such a terrible tragedy that Burnham, Reid, D'Aguiar, and so many others from that era that can answer so many mysterious questions about this country's past have gone to their grave without writing even a monograph. Someone like ‘Kit' Nascimento is still with us and though I think his role in Guyanese politics was an inglorious one, I believe he should write about what he thought was the nature of the PPP at that time.
Of course Peter Taylor is still alive and getting on in age. Mr. Taylor was the head of the anti-government paper “The Evening Post” at the time when Jagan was Premier and his government was under siege in 1964.
An attempt was made to assassinate Taylor . Most analysts of that period of Guyanese history believed the PPP had something to do with the gunning down of Taylor .
For the sake of the recording of history, I hope Taylor gives an interview in which he can put his own perspective on the shooting.
Two large gaps in Guyanese history have been filled by the publication of Baytoram Ramharack's “Against the Grain: Balram Singh Rai and the politics of Guyana” and Clem Seecharan‘s “Sweetening Bitter Sugar: Jock Campbell, the Booker Reformer in British Guiana, 1934-1966.”
These two titles have left a devastating blot on the career of Cheddi Jagan. When the latter book was launched, David Dabydeen invited Mrs. Jagan to accompany him to the ceremony but she refused. One wonders if for the sake of his political education, David Dabydeen has read these two publications. Dadydeen says he always admired Jagan. After reading these books, then the exposure of Cheddi Jagan that they brought to light must open the reader's eyes.
Guyanese who were part of the shaping of modern Guyana must keep on writing. A country needs to know about its mysteries.
There is an informative letter by Mr. Wesley Kirton in the Stabroek News of January 18 that plugs another hole in our nation's history.
They way our history has been presented to us, the PNC has always been the bad guy, the PPP, the good messenger. Kirton's letter tell us about some interesting aspects of the political character of people in the PNC that may not tally with the description we got from the PPP during the three decades the PPP was in opposition.
Kirton relates a story of how as a journalist working for the then PNC Government, he attended an interview with then Labour Minister, Winslow Carrington. Kirton explained how his youthful enthusiasm got the better of him and he confronted Carrington much to the fear of his colleagues. But he never received a subsequent vindictive response from Carrington. I don't think any PPP minister would be so lenient with a state media operative.
Kirton went on to show how he openly disagreed with Burnham on an article he wrote. Burnham let him have his say and he heard nothing more of the disagreement from Burnham.
Kirton then moved to then Information Minister Shirley Field-Ridley. He asserted his right as a journalist to carry human interest stories as headlines over governmental publications in the state-owned, “Citizen” which was printed in the afternoon. Kirton described how Field-Ridley would quarrel all the time but never touched him or the editor, Godfrey Wray.
Finally, Kirton asserted that Hoyte never sought to curtail his right to carry stories critical of the government. The portrait of tolerance on the part of PNC leaders that Kirton painted would not be possible under the present PPP administration. The more gaps that are filled in Guyanese history, the clearer will become the picture of the intolerant, authoritarian rulers that are in control of Guyana.