Articles by Janet Jagan
by Janet Jagan (Feb 17, 2007)
I used to think that Valentine’s Day was a joyful day, one to take note of and do something pleasant on that day. I can remember as a child at school we used to make Valentine cards, using lacy paper that is usually connected to cakes and sweet things. Receiving a Valentine’s card with a “guess who” as a signature, was always exciting and caused endless guessing about who had left it on my school desk.
In later years, there were gifts on Valentine’s Day and cards for my children, then my grandchildren.
But on Valentine’s Day 1997, the worst possible thing took place. The day was ending pleasantly and comfortably. I was on the third floor of State House, the living quarters of the official residence. My husband, Cheddi came home late in the afternoon after a hard day at the Office of the President and climbing the three flights of stairs.
He deposited his pile of papers on a table and sat down near me. Our dog, Terror and our cat Elvis came to play under his feet. They were fun to watch in their love-hate relationship, sometimes, cuddling together and sometimes snarling at one another. Then he left for his study and I brought him his dinner there.
At midnight, I was awakened by Cheddi. He said he wasn’t feeling so well and had tried to telephone our doctor, Dr Hughley Hanoman, but the phone wasn’t working. He telephoned his nephew who contacted two doctors who came over to State House to examine him. It was decided that he should go to hospital for checks. But our medical services were not what they are today. There was no ambulance. I remember that we put Cheddi in a Berbice chair and the guards carried him down the three flights of stairs and into a car. He was taken to the Public Hospital and placed in the Intensive Care Unit.
Thus began the almost three weeks of sorrowing, pain and uncertainty that led to his demise on March 6, 1997. All during his travail, he remained the Cheddi we all knew and loved. He never complained, he never asked for anything, he smiled and was always contained, trying at his best to comfort his sorrowing family, never adding to our distress by appearing to be in pain or discomfort. When he could not speak, due to a tube in his throat, he gave no evidence of hurting, but wrote notes to assure us all.
He died as he lived – composed, kind, understanding, not allowing his pain, his obvious discomfort, his knowledge that he knew he could not come out alive to add to the awful pain his family felt.
Very soon we will commemorate the 10th anniversary of his death. He remains alive in the hearts and minds of so many Guyanese – for who he was, what he did and how he conducted himself throughout his life and when he reached the zenith of his political life. He was a simple, yet profound man, a kind and gentle person who could be strong and demanding when he was fighting for the rights of oppressed people; he was an impressive public speaker who could influence thousands, yet he consulted all and sundry, from the porter to the academic, on issues that he considered important and not for one man’s decision alone. His legacy is for all to see and know. But what is more important is the love that so many had for him and still treasure.
For me, Valentine’s Day is the day that always reminds me of the loss of a great man, a loving husband, brother and father, father not only of his two children, but of the nation.© Nadira Jagan-Brancier 2009
by Janet Jagan (Feb 24, 2007)
I have observed, over a fairly long period of time, a tendency, particularly in the letter pages of the Stabroek News (SN) to give a new slant on the history of the time when the PNC held power – from the 1964 to the 1992 period. The tendency is to reform or rewrite history, to denigrate the role of the People’s Progressive Party during this era and to prop up the names of hitherto unknown “heroes” who “led” the struggle against tyranny.
, were met with pointed rifles and tear gas.
As recently as last week’s Saturday S/N, a writer gave a list of those who led the struggle and wrote: “When the PPP was still in the wilderness and clutching at straws, with no kind of plan to unseat the government of the day….” And it named the heroes of the struggle.
At least one of Guyana’s historians should research this period in Guyana’s history and come up with the truth.
I was there, along with numerous members of the PPP who can testify to this day the leading role the Party took in building resistance to the pernicious Burnham/PNC regime.
Many brave people struggled and were hurt in many ways during the long 28 years before the uprooting of the PNC. Beginning right after the 1964 elections many PPP leaders, including Brindley Benn and Cedric Nunes, both ministers of the PPP government, were detained at Sibley Hall, the Mazaruni Prisons, some for as long as two years. Large numbers of PPP activists suffered devastating police raids on their homes and businesses. PPP activists like the late Fazal Ally were falsely charged and imprisoned on trumped up charges. Large numbers of PPP members and supporters lost their jobs. The government controlled the movement of people and many were denied passports, or their passports were taken away.
Protests, like one particular event of workers marching peacefully in government protest from Berbice to Georgetown
I represented the PPP on the Elections Commission for the 1968 elections when Mr Hoyte represented the PNC and there was a rep of the United Force. Early in the game, I discovered the several ways which were being put in place to rig those elections. No one, no group, no media except the Mirror, carried my press releases outlining the plans for rigging. Not one voice, aside from the PPP, was uttered in protest. That’s how it was in those days – everyone, including the “heroes” named in S/N lacked the guts to open their mouths – and so it was for many years while the PPP stalwarts laboured amongst the people to keep their spirits up and not be afraid to take action to expose the deceit of the PNC.
And many took the blows on their chins. At Black Bush Polder, a known PPP stronghold, the PNC started breaking down settlers’ houses. Many mean acts took place and organizations like GAWU and the RPA led protests and fought back, always waiting for the rest of Guyanese to wake up and stop being afraid.
Stabroek News always has had nice things to say about former President Desmond Hoyte, because he helped the newspaper get established. Did S/N ever have one word of protest about the 1985 electoral rigging under Mr Hoyte? Of course, it didn’t take me 21 years to learn that he, as well as all the top PNC members, including some of international fame, were all part and parcel of the rigging process. I saw Hoyte upclose during the 1968 rigging.
And yet we read in S/N about the vigorous role that paper played in the restoration of democracy. Show me one word of protest over fraudulent elections when they were happening, by S/N and I’ll apologize.
The Mirror, which many like to downplay now that we are enjoying all the freedoms guaranteed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, played a most important role in the struggle to win the return of democratic rights. It suffered bans on newsprint, ink and printing machinery. Its role during those years should be better known and respected. Its vendors used to be beaten up by the PNC thugs – things people tend to forget as they look for new heroes of democracy’s return.
It was after the disgusting Hoyte – rigged 1985 elections that the Patriotic Coalition for Democracy (PCD) was formed, and the opposition to the PNC was strengthened, that the struggle intensified and the reins of power and terror were weakened, that we approached the end of the tyranny that almost destroyed Guyana.© Nadira Jagan-Brancier 2009
by Janet Jagan (March 24, 2007)
The famous Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited America in 1831 and published succinct accounts of his visit made this discerning remark: “I predict that any warrior prince who may arise in a great democratic nation will find it easier to lead the army to conquest than to make it live in peace after victory….” Tocqueville surely hit the nail on the head as regards the Bush invasion of Iraq. The longer the occupation army remains the deeper the US gets into the morass of hate, pain and suffering.
Like all wars that have no ideological content, as in wars for freedom or resistance to conquest or to protect minorities, etc, the Iraq war has pushed the world’s most powerful nation into a snake pit of filth and horrors.
What could be called the crimes of the century occurred in Iraq during the last two years, during US troop occupation of that country. One of the most vile of the many murders by US soldiers occurred in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad in March last year. At a court-martial held in the US, one soldier admitted to a plan by him and fellow soldiers to rape a 14-year-old Iraqi girl. They planned the attack over drinks and a game of cards, choosing the particular girl because there was only one male adult in the family and thus it would be easier to handle.
The house was invaded by the soldiers who took the girl’s mother, father and small sister into another room while they raped the girl and at the same time shot dead the three family members and then poured kerosene over the girl’s body and lit her on fire, to cover up the crime.
This was obviously a pre-meditated crime involving five US soldiers who used every device to cover-up the shocking crime. These criminal soldiers have gotten off relatively easy; one was sentenced to 90 years with the possibility of parole in 20 years, one was discharged from the army and is awaiting a civilian trial and the others are awaiting sentencing. But if this were all, it would be bad enough when one concludes what war does to the victors as well as the conquered. Both are destroyed in one way or another.
A number of US marines are charged with the killing of 24 unarmed civilians during 2005 in Haditha, Iraq, another attempted cover-up. It took over a year for the cover-up to be uncovered and the perpetrators of the dastardly acts to be charged.
In another atrocity, three US troops have been charged with murder for killing three Iraqi prisoners and threatening to kill a fellow soldier who wanted to report the incident to the US military authorities. And in Italy, prosecutors have called for the indictment of an American soldier for the shooting of an Italian intelligence agent at a checkpoint in Iraq last year.
A Reuter report said that: “Along with the widely publicized abuses of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison (sexual humiliation, etc), the killings have damaged US prestige and led to international condemnation.”
The brutalities that have taken place in Iraq since the US invasion are reminiscent of the massacre of innocent Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in 1968, when American GIs raped, looted and killed 400 unarmed men, women and children. This was one of the most shameful acts of the Vietnam War, which divided the US so sharply in the 60s.
All of these point to the fact that wars bring out terrible brutalities that can exist in so-called civilized man. War not only threatens all of humanity, but it brings with it the possibility of releasing in people the savage nature that lies hidden beneath modern advances.
When we look at war-torn areas of the world, like Iraq and Darfur, for example, we see almost a reversal of all the advances made by man through the ages. One of my colleagues who writes frequently on this page, Dale Bisnauth, ends his articles by the word “Peace!” I do the same!
© Nadira Jagan-Brancier 2009
© 1999 Cheddi Jagan Research Centre. All rights reserved.
