Within two weeks, the Guyanese nation will commemorate the 186th anniversary of “Emancipation Day” – the end of slavery on Aug 1st 1838. There has since been much discussion and argumentation on the reasons why Britain decided to make that seminal decision. In the background, of course, were the episodic acts of rebellion by the enslaved populace. These condignly reminded the authorities of the precariousness of their rule in slave societies. There was also the famous thesis, defended by T&T’s Dr Eric Williams, that rather than humanitarian sentiments in Britain, the clinching factor was their decision that free trade, rather than the sugar-inspired mercantilist trade system would generate greater profits for industrialising Britain.
Be as it may, Emancipation was the seminal act that launched the country we inherited in 1966 as “Guyana”. During those 128 years, the freed enslaved Africans and former European ruling class witnessed the arrival of indentured labourers – first the Portuguese, followed by Indians and Chinese to join the Indigenous Peoples forming our “Land of Six Peoples”. It is to our credit that very early in our post-Emancipation history, there were individuals who recognised that for emancipation to deliver the freedom it implied, more was needed than the removal of shackles on the sugar plantations. They needed the right to constitute their own government.
Towards the end of the 19th century there were sustained initiatives for widening the franchise. Up to then it had been restricted to the planter and governing classes, and the demand was it be expanded to give the slowly growing middle class a role in selecting the members of the legislature that ran the colony. The labour movement, launched in the first two decades of the 20th century to agitate for improvement in wages and working conditions, was a key player in raising the consciousness of the masses of Guyanese who were mostly ordinary labourers. They became the incubator of overt political parties since “bread and butter” issues commanded the attention of their incipient constituency.
It was not until 1947, however, that the franchise was significantly expanded following the release of the Moyne Commission Report, which had been embargoed during WWII. The struggles of the sugar workers in the Caribbean – including Guyana – were the seminal events that led to the Commission and its conclusion that economic and social changes should also include political changes to administer the colonies. It was not coincidental that in the most significant 1947 election, Dr Cheddi Jagan won in the sugar-dominated East Demerara Constituency. Modern politics was ushered in with the announcement of universal franchise and the formation of the PPP in 1950. The aroused Guyanese people used their franchise to elect the PPP in 1953 with an overwhelming majority, which stunned even the neophyte politicians, much less the colonial powers.
Unfortunately for Guyana, we became caught up in Cold War politics and we lost the power to select our own rulers – the most powerful right in the post-emancipation era – when the British Government suspended the Constitution and removed the PPP from office. But the “coup” served to educate the populace to the importance of a Constitution in running the affairs of the state. Even the mighty British Crown could not do as it wanted but had to suspend the constitution to oust the Govt. It was therefore understood by the Guyanese people that it was not sanctioned by the Constitution.
In the following years, Forbes Burnham was to split the nationalist PPP and introduce ethnic politics into Guyana when he finagled the African Guyanese section under the umbrella of his PNC. To be installed into power, he supported a change in the constitution to introduce PR; and to remain in power, he acted outside the constitution, even the one he wrote in 1980, to rig elections.
Today, we are on the cusp of General Elections to elect the most consequential government since 1992. With oil revenues providing the wherewithal to finally chart our own destiny, let us chose the government that has consistently worked for the nation’s progress – the PPP.
