Are we celebrating failure?
There is nothing to celebrate about the upcoming Golden Jubilee unless it is the skulduggery, violence and corruptions that ushered in our independence from British colonial rule. We are more deeply divided than ever. There has been no healing, no progress, and no development. As a country, we have failed to harness our potential to create a good life for all.
The grandest irony of the Jubilee spectacle is the many who have returned “home” for the celebrations even as no one asks why they left and why they will never return.
Other nations, like the United States and France, were born out of civil war and revolution from which they emerged to craft the constitutional framework and harness the political will to move forward. Not so in Guyana.
Here, the infighting and conspiracies that birthed this nation are still with us today. We nurture them and they keep their stranglehold on every aspect of our lives.
The unity that marked the early fight against colonial rule was shattered when personal ambition trumped any idea of working together for the national good. Whereas the two iconic leaders, Dr Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham, cooperated for years within the PPP, this unity came apart in 1953 when Burnham issued his ultimatum for party leadership; it was “leader or nothing”.
That fallout resulted in the encampment of the two major race blocs – Indians and Africans – in the PPP and PNC respectively and there has been no move over the past 50 years to heal that divide. Actually, both parties appear quite comfortable with the status quo.
The British colonials profited from and even fostered the race division and they willingly colluded in the US’ Cold War strategy to remove the Communist Jagan from government and place their chosen candidate Burnham into power.
From 1961 to 1964, the period of Jagan’s premiership, the CIA funded riots and disturbances throughout the country. Justification for strikes and demonstrations were scant. On February 16, 1962, remembered as Black Friday, over four blocks of the city, Regent and Water Streets stretching to Stabroek Market, went up in flames.
The following year there was an 80-day general strike and in 1964 the most brutal attacks occurred at Wismar on May 24. The entire Indian population was uprooted and their properties burned. For two days there was arson, assaults, looting, rape and murder. Remembered as the Wismar Massacre, it left 1800 Indians homeless. They had to flee. This remains Guyana’s one act of ethnic cleansing.
Six weeks later, on July 6, the Son Chapman launch was blown up in the Demerara River, killing 43 Africans. African Guyanese view this as an act of retaliation for the Wismar Massacre though this has never been proven.
This violence and discord was the stage on which independence was granted. We had done well. Our fellow Guyanese were loyal activists in the pay of Britain and America for the grand prize of political power, and the final manoeuvre in the conspiracy was the institution of proportional representation as the electoral system for the 1964 general elections.
This allowed Burnham to form a Coalition Government with Fred D’Aguiar’s United Force party, a coalition that lasted two years. From there on the PNC ruled as a dictatorship until 1992 when, with the end of the Cold War, democracy was restored with the first free and fair elections in almost three decades. Jagan won comfortably.
A few of the actors from that time are still around. One such is Sydney King, now Eusi Kwayana, who started his political career with the PPP then switched his allegiance to the PNC. However he resigned from that party when Burnham said he would support Jagan on the independence issue if Jagan won the 1964 elections. King said: “I am sure that Burnham’s statement is dangerous to the African people – I cannot be any part of Burnham’s plans.”
Independence under a Jagan government was unacceptable to him, and Indian fears of independence under Burnham did become fully realised.
This race-based partisanship, so clearly stated by King/Kwayana, still underlies our politics today and is the main contributor to our nation’s many failures.
As many get ready to “celebrate”, we should also reflect on Jagan’s objection to the May 26 date. In his seminal work “The West on Trial” he writes that the date could only have been chosen as a mark of “contempt for the Guyanese people and a grim reminder of the unfortunate events at Wismar”.
For 50 years, we have carried all this rancorous baggage along with us and have failed as a nation to overcome, heal or solve anything. Are we, then, celebrating failure?
