The PPP never opposed Guyana becoming a Republic
Kaieteur News-[N.B.: There was a typographical mistake in yesterday’s column. It stated that the Minister had raced ahead and set the date for the DCB elections. This should have read the GCB elections and not the DCB elections which were reportedly ordered by the Court. This column apologizes for the mistake.]
If we accept that the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) represented more than half of the electorate in 1970, then it is untrue to say that a Guyanese majority did not support the achievement of Republican status. The PPP was always supportive of Guyana becoming a republic.
What the PPP opposed was the kind of Republic that existed, one that Jagan regarded as a smoke screen for capitalist-imperialist domination. This is the same kind of domination that rears its ugly head today through foreign control of our oil and gold.
The PPP had reservations about what happened on February 23, 1970. And these doubts were expressed by Dr. Cheddi Jagan addressed his address to the National Assembly.
Jagan made it known that Guyana becoming a republic was always one of the main objectives of his party. He listed the others as a universal vote for adults, voting at age 18, self-government and Independence.
Addressing the National Assembly a year before Guyana became a Republic, Jagan said the PPP’s stance had always, in principle, supported republicanism.
He would have preferred, however, for Guyana to become a Republic and break all constitutional ties with Great Britain upon the country reaching Independence. But he said when he raised this issue in London in 1962/63, Burnham said he preferred to have the monarchy for a while.
He said attaining Republican status was not based on principle. He considered it merely a way for Burnham to overturn the courts by banning appeals to the Privy Council. For Jagan, the declaration of the Republic was merely a change of form and not of substance because, in his mind, the colonists have only surrendered symbols and forms rather than substance.
For him, cooperative socialism was a hoax. He said it was a cloak and a cover for neo-colonialism and a capitalist-imperialist republic. He was correct because even in the Republic, the heights of the economy were in foreign hands. He asked himself how a socialist society could be established when the economic base and the political and ideological superstructure were increasingly under imperial control; when the country’s resources were parted, and when the country was “mortgaged and choked by huge local and foreign debts; when the real producers are punished, agriculture is hindered and industrialization stifled… ”
He was convinced that, as long as the economic structure was in the hands of foreign capitalists, co-operative socialism would fail. His prediction proved accurate. Even when the economy was controlled by the State, cooperative socialism failed.
Jagan was not convinced that co-operatives would work even though he did not in principle oppose co-operatives. He said that socialism was just cooperative socialism. History proved correct. Nor did he believe that co-operatives were the means to achieve socialism. Instead, he says, only socialism will allow co-operative growth and development. Again, history was deferred to him.
According to Jagan, “Conceptually, republicanism was a declaration of independence, an expression of the principle that sovereignty came from the people and not from oppressors.” But in Guyana the sovereignty of the people had been hijacked by electoral fraud by a minority regime that dominated the rights and aspirations of the people.
At the time of becoming Guyana a republic, the PPP spoke on behalf of a Guyanese majority and the PPP’s position has always been and still is in support of Guyana becoming a Republic. It is very important that the young generation is not fooled into believing the now-pedaled retreat that the majority of the population did not support Guyana to become a Republic.
But one has to ask what lies behind this review of history. Why is this wrong situation now being peddled in the public domain? What is coming up?
God knows that Guyana is being reunited with foreign oil and gold companies riding broadly over our people’s assertion to a fair share of the national marriage. The least thing Guyana needs right now is to distort our history which would suggest that the people of Guyana were divided at the time the country became a Republic.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.)