RESPECT GOD TO GRANNY!
Kaieteur News – Janet Jagan was the former President of Guyana. She died on March 28, 2009. This tribute is made in her honor. As we approach International Women’s Day. She was one of the most outstanding female political figures of the 20th century.
I still find the perfect politician. I know many good, decent and honest leaders, but I have yet to meet someone without flaws, someone who is loved equally by everyone and diverse.
Guyanese is demanding too much of his leaders. Guyanese must begin to take the good with the bad or otherwise for ourselves to reflect the perfection, which he seeks in his leaders.
I believe that if we began to judge our leaders much in the same way as we judge our own failures and successes, this country would be a living paradise. Unfortunately, we tend to do just the opposite; we tend to judge ourselves fairly but we are extremely harsh on our political leaders.
There is no political leader I know who has been judged as harsh and unfair as the former President of Guyana, Mrs. Janet Jagan. I have not known of any political leader throughout history who has been scandalized and vilified by his own people, such as Mrs. Jagan.
Mr. Jagan had a strong jaw. Only one person complained publicly about the way he treated her. That person was Llewellyn John, who had recently died, and who said she spoke to him in the most disrespectful and rude manner. Ironically, years later, he would go on television to defend his right as President.
This country will for a long time bear that shame for the terrible things that have been said and done to Mrs. Janet Jagan in this country.
Here is a woman who devoted her entire life to serving this country. This is someone who has suffered a lot of nasty comments and ostracism from her own people, because of her dedication to Guyana’s struggle for independence.
This is someone who broke social taboo in this country that held back women and the poor. This is a white woman who came to the Black Caribbean, fought for freedom from colonial oppression and domination and yet when she became President of Guyana she was vilified.
This is someone who has lived in Guyana and been a citizen of this country longer than most of us born here. And yet, when she became President, the fact that she was white became one of the excuses for forcing her out of office.
What has been done to Mrs. Janet Jagan took to the streets of this country between December 1997 and August 1999 forever ashamed of Guyana’s political history. It was terrifying that someone who had done so much, at such a great personal sacrifice, could be treated so cruelly by the very people who enjoyed the freedom he gave so much for.
The struggle for Guyana’s freedom may have started centuries ago. But by the 1940s, that battle was over. The privileged middle-class interests who made symbolic appeals for self-control and independence did not have the mass support to press the British to give up what the British did not want to surrender.
If independence had come under this opportunistic political class, it would have been much later and Guyana would have been doomed to become another banana republic.
The persons who radicalized the struggles of independence in this country, the persons who gave that movement a new impetus, the persons who reigned the Guyana freedom torch. and Mrs. Jagan. No amount of political review about the two people can change that fact.
Were it not for the Jagans, Guyana would have gained independence when the British would have emptied this country of all its wealth.
I hope that when the authentic history of this country is written, there will be a more sympathetic treatment for Mrs. Janet Jagan, whose role in the fight for independence is seriously underestimated.
And yet, interestingly, her influence over Cheddi is greatly exaggerated.
Cheddi Jagan has always been an ideology within the PPP. This is why the PPP is in such a mess. This is why the bourgeoisie class has penetrated the government so much – because of the sterility of the ideological process within the party.
In the past Mrs. Jagan is unfair to be the one who had the most ideological influence on Cheddi. She is accused of the major influence on him to become a communist.
Nothing could be further than the truth. Mrs. Jagan himself and his politics have been more humanistic than ideological. It can be considered stubborn, stubborn and hard-wired but not a profound ideology. He acted out of a sense of what was right or wrong and what was in the interests of the party and government, which he has formed.
Sometimes the two things would clash. And this caused some misunderstanding of it. But she was someone with a solid pair of shoulders and generally a good heart. She helped many poor people in her time and was always free and generous with her money.
She deserved more sympathetic treatment. He suffered racist attacks. Instead of condemning the way it was treated it seems as though there is more convenience in turning the victim into an aggressor.
She wasn’t perfect. Neither do the attackers. But let it be understood that no woman in this country has done more, suffered more than Mrs. Janet Jagan for freedom cause.
Respect must be given where it is due. Such respect must be shown at the feet of one of the world’s leading female rebels, Mrs. Janet Jagan.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.)