Remembering Cheddi Jagan
`…opinions and commentaries must be held to the same standards of accuracy with regard to facts, as news reports’
By Prem Misir October 9, 2006
RECENT commentaries on the electronic and in the print media are deeply troubling. The commentaries continue to aggressively distort the political history of this country.
It is one thing to have an opinion about something, but another to present this opinion as a fact. Opinions are not necessarily facts.
Most codes of ethics in journalism require journalists to collect and report information of importance and interest to the public accurately, honestly, and impartially.
The main purpose of presenting an opinion or commentary is to inform the public and help them to make judgments on the issues of the day. So, opinions and commentaries must be held to the same standards of accuracy with regard to facts, as news reports. And indeed editors have some responsibility to ensure that their journalists comply with the principles of objectivity, balance, and fundamental fairness.
The work of Dr Cheddi Jagan is continuously being besmirched with distortions -- that Dr Jagan, among others, inflicted great hurt on Guyana, with anecdotes that really are not analyses.
But let us for now cast our minds mainly on Dr Jagan. No one could disagree that we all are embedded with fault structures that inform behaviours. But then in a force field analysis where we distinguish between the pros and cons, we would be able to see the magnitude of Dr Jagan’s contributions toward nation building, notwithstanding that we would be tapping a mere few, and not rhetoric, real achievements.
It’s hard to configure a ‘nation’ without independence; it’s hard to see the emergence of a ‘nation’ under colonial hegemony, colonial domination.
Naipaul criticizes colonialists’ perceptions that see local peoples as having no distinct qualities, and that all of them can be compartmentalized into one cultural non-distinguishing brownish mass. Culture makes a person, and colonial domination hurts the culture of the dominated, hurts human development, hurts national development. Dr Jagan understood the full wrath of colonial hegemony.
Former President Dr Jagan was a tenacious fighter against colonial domination, a fighter for Independence. Dr Jagan couched this idea of independence in a pamphlet titled ‘Cooperative Way’ in 1945 -- at a time when there was no mass following, no mass foundation. There was indeed a political vacuum and the working people’s interests were excluded from both the Indian and African middle-class agenda.
Dr Jagan with Ashton Chase, Jocelyn Hubbard, and his wife Janet Jagan, then sought to fill this vacuum, bringing forth a new dawn in Guyana’s politics. The creation of the Political Affairs Committee (PAC), forerunner to the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), heralded the beginnings of the mass-based party and the articulation and resolution of workers’ concerns. And indeed, this was Dr Jagan’s indomitable style of contributing to Guyana.
The unrelenting campaign for independence continued after the formation of the PPP in 1950. The PPP’s feverish struggle drew the ire of the British planters, prompting the arrival of the Waddington Commission. And its major recommendation gave birth to ‘one man, one vote’. This is universal adult suffrage and the PPP under Dr Jagan gave Guyanese this self-respect and dignity to voice their opinion. And indeed, this was Dr Jagan’s indomitable style of contributing to Guyana.
When independence finally became an agenda item at the 1960 Constitutional Conference, the People’s National Congress (PNC) exhibited little enthusiasm for independence. Again in 1962, the PNC, in a further effort to delay Independence, conditioned its granting upon the introduction of a new electoral system.
Again, when in 1961 the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Reginald Maudling, refused Jagan’s request for independence by May 31, 1962, Jagan pressured the United Nations Fourth Committee. The committee agreed to mull the matter of independence and to report back to the General Assembly.
And at the same time, this Fourth Committee requested the British to resurrect independence negotiations without further delay. We should know that only an independent territory was eligible to make representations on this Fourth Committee. In 1961, Guyana was not yet Independent, but Jagan was able to manoeuvre the hearing. And indeed, this was Dr Jagan’s indomitable style of contributing to Guyana.
Dr Jagan firmly believed that a university is inextricably linked with national development and that access to higher education should be available to all. Once Cabinet approved the proposal for the establishment of a university on December 6, 1961, Jagan rolled out intensive communications with academics abroad to assist him in this needed project. The presence of the University of Guyana today, largely a product of Dr Jagan’s guiding light and resoluteness, is a remarkable testimony to the heroic people who stood their ground to ensure that the university continues to have breadth and to be of high degree. And indeed, this was Dr Jagan’s indomitable style of contributing to Guyana.
And there are now desperate cries that Dr Jagan and the PPP bungled the opportunity for national consensus in 1992. Untrue. How so?
The PPP first initiated the proposal for a National Patriotic Front Government in 1977; then the Patriotic Coalition for Democracy (PCD) emerged after the 1985 elections. The PPP wanted the PCD programme to be disseminated, but others disagreed. The choice of a Presidential Candidate and joint slate for the National Assembly became problematic.
The PPP then recommended a provisional Presidential candidate and a provisional joint slate. Both provisions were rejected, including the rejection of Jagan and Dr Roger Luncheon as Presidential candidates, the former for being an Indian and the latter a communist.
And the wrangling went on. Dr Jagan and the PPP made significant recommendations to break the impasse at several points, but all were severally rejected. And indeed, this was Dr Jagan’s indomitable style of contributing to Guyana.
Jagan was no bootlicker. He stood for the moral law of truth. Tim Hector of Antigua puts it beautifully thus: "…Cheddi Jagan…exemplar of the new Caribbean, lived a noble life. Of few, if any, that can be said in the Caribbean, among those who held state power…Winston Churchill and Harold MacMillan, John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Dean Rusk had all conspired against him backed by their enormous intelligence and military machines. Jagan resisted, retreated but never surrendered." And indeed, this was Dr Jagan’s indomitable style of contributing to Guyana.
History will remember Cheddi Jagan as a world leader who struggled for social progress among the dispossessed and the disadvantaged, who vigorously implanted progressive political thought, who was a resolute builder of political movements, who forged the political-labour nexus, who was an unwavering Caribbean integrationist, who was a true internationalist in his unrelenting promulgation of the New Global Human Order, and whose authentic local legacy has to be his tireless fight for national unity, working class unity, and racial unity.
And indeed, this was Dr Jagan’s indomitable style of contributing to Guyana --real and formidable political performance.
(Printed in the Guyana Chronicle October 9, 2006)