As Guyana celebrates its 59th Anniversary as an Independent Nation, it faces many challenges, just as it did in earlier years. Converting a dependence syndrome into a sense of independence, creating the institutional structures of an independent nation, embarking on economic transformation, confronting the challenges of a deeply divided nation, negotiating a way between the […]
Category Archives: cheddi jagan
SEECHARAN’S OLD, ENDURING, ANTI-JAGAN NARRATIVE
The legacy of Dr. Cheddi Jagan emerges for consideration in March every year, the month of his birth and of his passing. Dr. Clem Seecharan’s book, “Cheddi Jagan and the Cold War 1946-1992,” has provoked some discussion this year. Dr. Seecharan is an historian of modest accomplishments who wrote mainly about cricket, until he was […]
CHEDDI JAGAN – SOME REFLECTIONS
In 1943 Cheddi Jagan returned to a British Guiana that was a cauldron of poverty. The report of the Moyne Commission published in 1945 concluded that for the labouring population, “mere subsistence was increasingly problematic.” The defeat of Nazi Germany with the help of the heroic Soviet Union inspired many; India, China and the colonial […]
VESTIGES OF SOCIALISM
In response to a complaint by Dr. Terrence Campbell that higher wages and salaries by government and foreign companies areattracting workers away from local businesses which cannot compete, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo responded that “people want the vestiges of socialism still to hang on…” (Dem Waves Jan 9). It appears that the Vice President meant that the plea for the protection sought for local business is tantamount to relying on the ‘vestiges of socialism.’
AT HOME WITH CHEDDI
In 1991 Vidya Naipaul, the Trinidad born Nobel Prize Winner in Literature, visited Guyana for the second time. He had first come in 1961 and had met Cde Cheddi and Cde Janet. On this second occasion he visited them both again and spoke at length with Cde Cheddi here at his home. This is how […]