Tributes to Janet Jagan
Remarkable Janet Jagan at 86
-- CARICOM's oldest and still very active politician
By RICKEY SINGH
ANOTHER MILESTONE: Mrs Janet Jagan accepts a medal for her late husband, Dr Cheddi Jagan, last year from PPP General Secretary Donald Ramotar.
BRIDGETOWN -- The oldest politician of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and one still actively involved in party politics, marks her 86th birthday today in Georgetown where she lives, does her own cooking and manages her health problems.
She is Janet Jagan, a remarkable woman of American birth whose outstanding contributions have helped to significantly shape the social and political environment of Guyana. She has an incomparable record of "firsts" in Guyanese politics -- including first elected woman city councillor, Prime Minister and Executive President.
Guyana is the CARICOM state that has been her adopted homeland since arriving from her hometown in Chicago 62 years ago as wife of the late Cheddi Jagan, a veritable household name in Caribbean politics.
Whatever the selection criteria, readers of the informative handbook "CARICOM -- Our Caribbean Community", published in 2005, should not look for her among the recipients of the "CARICOM Triennial Award for Women" that was established back in 1984.
But this indomitable political personality of the Caribbean region, who has survived many ordeals -- in colonial British Guiana, including as a political prisoner and through the turbulent post-independence politics of Guyana -- is outstanding in many ways in the positions held in the service of Guyana as a woman politician.
A co-founder of the now 56-year-old People's Progressive Party (PPP), one of the oldest in CARICOM, "Janet", as she is popularly hailed at social and even official events, has had the honour of serving as the first elected woman member of the Georgetown City Council; first woman Deputy Speaker of Parliament; also as Minister of Labour and Minister of Home Affairs. She has served as General Secretary of the PPP for 20 years.
OUTSTANDING 'FIRSTS’
With the return of the PPP to government in October 1992 -- after a prolonged gruelling battle for restoration of electoral democracy -- she became Guyana's first woman Prime Minister with the death of President Jagan in March 1997 from a heart attack.
Following new elections in 1997 at which she led the PPP to its highest percentage of victory (55 per cent), Janet Jagan, the former nursing student of Chicago who had fallen in love with the Guyanese dental student at age 23, was elected as the country's first Executive President.
Failing health forced her to give up office two years later but as the honoured matriarch of the PPP, she continues to serve on its Executive and Central Committees, while also functioning as chairperson of the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre. As of last year, she also returned to the post of Editor of "Thunder" the party's ideological quarterly. She was its first Editor when the journal was launched in 1950.
A mother of two, a son and daughter, and grandmother of five, Janet Jagan has produced an anthology of Guyanese children books and is currently editing for publication soon a book on the writings of the famous Guyanese dancer and performing artist Helen Taitt.
Based largely on a series of articles written by Taitt in the PPP-linked weekly newspaper, "Mirror" -- of which Jagan is a former editor, the book will be entitled "My Life, My Country", after Taitt's published series.
HER ANSWERS
Asked to point to an aspect of her official positions that she really liked, in her often stormy political career, this once firebrand leftwing politician surprisingly singled out as "perhaps the most enjoyable, satisfying period was when I served as Guyana's United Nations ambassador. I loved that very much..."
How it feels to still be around to witness her party heading four successive governments since the restoration of electoral democracy in October 1992, I asked this controversial, mercurial politician: "Well, when you think of it, we (PPP) have won all the free and fair elections contested, starting from the first in 1953..."
What are the prospects for a rapprochement between the PPP and its traditional main rival for state power, the PNC, in view of all the talk after the recent (August 28) general election for "creative initiatives" to move the country forward?
The old, crafty politician's reply was: "I don't think that either side has that as a priority right now, but I would prefer to leave it at that..."
And how does she plan on spending her 86th birthday?
"Oh, I have no special plans...I will most likely make a visit to Freedom House (PPP headquarters); read, follow the news -- local, regional and international, as time permits..."
Then, laughingly, she added: "Don't ask me what I am going to cook because I haven't decided that. It could be something quite simple, depending on what I feel like eating... Frankly, it is just good to still be around to follow the progress and challenges of Guyana and to be a part of it all."
I have since gathered that birthday surprises await her, and not only from her PPP.
Happy 86th, Mrs Jagan!
© 1999 Cheddi Jagan Research Centre. All rights reserved.
