Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 05, 2010 Editorial
Founded on January 1, 1950, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) is now sixty years old – practically the lifespan of the average Guyanese nowadays. Very few of the founding members are still around – Messrs Ashton Chase and Eusi Kwayana come to mind. But then that is the point of institutions, isn’t it? That it carries on the activities intended to give life to a defining value through its mode of operation.
The longevity of an institution, then, depends primarily on the relevance of the value to the people sought to be involved and to the people that flesh out the necessary flip side of the institution – the organisation.
In the case of Guyana, the PPP was the first organisation that came flat out and declared that it was dedicated to struggling for the independence of the country from Britain. While there had been politicians and political organisations before the PPP, they had all focused merely on seeking reforms within the status quo to at best ameliorate the hardships that most Guyanese were then experiencing. The PPP identified the nexus between the colonial status of the country and the poverty of most of its citizens in a language that most of the latter could understand and appreciate. The people accepted the argument that independence would improve their lot.
The PPP was also fortunate in the calibre of the persons that gathered around its banner in the beginning. Preceded by the Political Action Committee (PAC) that had been launched in 1947 (and could point to a member -Dr Cheddi Jagan – being elected to the Legislature) the PPP arose after years of discussions and debates among individuals from a variegated background. The PPP had a coherent political platform in addition to persons drawn from all the vaunted “six races” of the colony.
An interesting and fateful decision in this regard was to have Ashton Chase – an original founder – step aside for the newly-minted lawyer Forbes Burnham as the Chairman of the party. Burnham, it was felt, would garner greater support from Africans because of the pride he had engendered after winning the Guyana Scholarship some years before.
It was going to be the first of many manoeuvres to ensure “ethnic balance” in an organisation that putatively did not give much credence to the reality of such categorisations. There was also a good balance between the rural-urban, male-female, professional-working class divides.
The PPP won the 1953 elections by an overwhelming margin and the young leaders set about enthusiastically implementing their programme. It was evidently too enthusiastic (not to mention radical) for the colonial power and the constitution was quickly suspended to kick the government out of office to prevent was determined to be a “communist” takeover.
In the interregnum a split was encouraged (facilitated?) by the British and in the 1957 elections there were a PPP (Jagan) and a PPP (Burnham). With the victory of the PPP (J), Burnham launched the Peoples National Congress the following year. The political die was cast and set to endure into the present.
The victory of communist Fidel Castro in Cuba and his Moscow ties were to have a critical role for the future of the PPP. Jagan’s alleged similar proclivities aroused fears in the US, which applied pressures on the British after the PPP’s successive electoral victory in 1961 to withhold independence for Guyana under the PPP. From then onwards, matters proceeded as in a Greek tragedy, inexorably to its dénouement. Riots, arson, murder, looting, ethnic cleansing and changes in the electoral system led to the installation of a PNC-UF coalition government in 1964.
The PPP stuck it through 28 years in the political wilderness that was the lot of the opposition during a regime of rigged elections. It has to be tribute to the leadership of the PPP to have achieved this feat. Not coincidentally, the fall of the Soviet Union led to free and fair elections in 1992 and to the return of the PPP to office.
They have been there since. We will evaluate their regime in a future editorial.
Where is the BETTER MANAGEMENT/RENEGOTIATION OF THE OIL CONTRACTS you promised Jagdeo?
Apr 19, 2024
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