When the authentic history of Guyana is recorded it will be conceded that the only progenitor of the independence movement, the champion whose struggles drove the movement that led to the disconnect of the shackles of colonization from the British was none other than Dr Cheddi Jagan.
It was Dr Jagan who began the agitation for freedom long before Forbes Burnham joined with him in the genuine mass movement political party, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP).
There is too much ambiguity about the Father of our proud nation, but all the pertinent data regarding the long fight with the British over the granting of independence of the then British Guiana will confirm that it was Cheddi Jagan who initiated and spearheaded the struggle, which culminated in the birth of the nation, and for which we observed the 43rd birth anniversary on May 26th, 2009.
The ambiguity about Mr Burnham’s role in the independence struggle is primarily because it was he, as the then Prime Minister of British Guiana, who received the instrument of independence from the Queen’s representative on May 19th. That it was Burnham who received the instruments of independence is also quite another ugly episode of intrigue, injustice and conspiracy of international chicanery, and also subsumed in historical ambiguities. In the final analysis, it was Cheddi Jagan, who, in a spirit of completely selfless, involuntary exhilaration, strode across from his seat in the pavilion at the National Park to embrace Forbes Burnham, on the lowering of the Union Jack and the rising of our Golden Arrowhead, and who created emotional outbursts from the mammoth crowd at the flag-raising site on that famous night 43 years ago.
This is a brief reflection on just a few minutes of that historic birth of a nation by someone who was there. It may be useful to ponder on what may have been if the recipient of those independent instruments were given to the truly great national hero, Dr Cheddi Jagan. Again authentic history will support the view that the nation has made leaps and bounds of advancement under the PPP/C administration over the immediate past fifteen years far removed from the squalor in which the PNC left the country after twenty odd years of administering the country’s affairs before and immediately after independence on May 26, 1966. |
