MY personal interactions with Dr. Jagan were limited to being a part of several audiences where he spoke.
I also had several fleeting handshakes after or during public engagements. I have one particular memory of an encounter with Dr. Jagan, sometime in the mid-90s, could be 96, I’m not sure.
I was a young student at UG, together with 2 other friends, we were heading to Avenue of the Republic and Regent Street to take a bus to the campus. We had to walk past Freedom House. While in that vicinity, we saw Dr. Jagan who appeared to be casually ‘liming’ on the sidewalk outside Freedom House. He was in the company of about three or four other persons; he was wearing what Guyanese refer to as ‘ordinary clothes’.
Then someone drove up and had difficulty parking, Dr. Jagan stepped out to indicate to the oncoming traffic to stop to allow enough room for that person to do his parking manoeuvres.
He was the President of Guyana, and we did not observe any major swarming security detail. Dr. Jagan appeared as an ordinary citizen just engaging other ordinary citizens, no fanfare.
One of my friends had a negative visceral reaction to Dr. Jagan’s deportment. She pouted and carried on about how much she thought he had no class.
“How a man could be president and just deh like duh pon the street?”
She thought he should appear regal, formal and stately. I vehemently disagreed and argued that, that sort of humility and down-to-earth deportment is lovely and refreshing.
I argued that when it’s time to be regal Dr. Jagan was quite capable of functioning in that arena as may be fitting and appropriate. I surmised that our different points of view were informed largely by our upbringing. My friend was brought up in Cummingsburg Georgetown, I am from rural Berbice and our socialisation took on and created a different outlook on these matters.
Another incident that is burned into my memory was a comment attributed to President Jagan that “Africans were at the bottom of the social ladder”.
Some people had revolting reactions to the comment. The opposition milked it, repackaged it and peddled it in ways that were immensely effective in Afro-Guyanese communities.
Though his statements were mischaracterised by his detractors, it was a source of major hurt for a large segment of Afro-Guyanese. Back then, the PNC and other opposition elements had a political megaphone which Afro-Guyanese paid attention to, they were far more suspectable to race baiting than they are today.
Desmond Hoyte was leader of the opposition, he was seen as a statesman, a man of substance whose politics was informed by hard issues, he was not seen as a race-based activist.
The nation was not browbeaten and bombarded everyday with wolf crying accusations about race. So, when the accusations against Dr. Jagan came from Hoyte’s office, it took a foothold in Afro communities, it came over as credible.
Despite the fact that he was taken out of context, Dr. Jagan didn’t seek to explain it away, he simply apologised. I believe the Afro-Guyanese community connected with his humility and sincerity.
I learned from Boyo Ramsaroop, Khemraj Ramjattan, Moses Nagamootoo and Former President Ramotar that that incident tore Dr. Jagan. He was very sorrowful that the Afro population was made to believe, so widely, that he intended harm to their social interest. I recall that during a recess break in the Jagdeo-Kissoon libel trial, I was in the company of Dr. Roger Luncheon (who testified in court that day) and several other persons having a free and open discussion on ethnic politics in Guyana.
Dr. Luncheon was asked about that bottom of the ladder comment. He gave an identical answer to that of Ramsaroop et al.
Dr. Luncheon was also asked how can he be complicit in allowing the government to have nearly all Indo-Guyanese heads of agencies and heads of diplomatic missions. The addendum to that question was whether he thought that Dr. Jagan would have allowed that to happen.
Dr. Luncheon gave a nuanced response. A response which I believe explains a lot about the evolution of party politics in Guyana. Dr. Luncheon said the shape of leadership in the PPP could be explained by the way the political struggles evolved and our historical living arrangements which placed us in ethnic enclaves.
He argued that the majority of those who struggled with Dr. Jagan were East Indians and the few Africans who struggled with him had an unshakable place in his government, but that list was exhaustive. He further opined that, outside of Georgetown, we were all raised, schooled, churched and politically persuaded in ethnic enclaves.
When the PPP took government, it was not selecting leaders based on ethnic hue, it was looking for loyal and trustworthy soldiers, especially those who were part of the struggle. The PPP was churning out second and third generation Indo-Guyanese with a history of loyalty to the party than the party was able to procure a lineage of Afro-Guyanese or their ability to recruit a new school.
So, when a leadership void is created, the ranking leaders at the time instinctively and organically reached out to those already in their field of view. Those in their field of view were most likely to come from the enclave where their greatest camaraderie existed.
Dr. Luncheon also said that he thought Dr. Jagan would have been more thoughtful, selective and deliberate and would’ve relied less on the instinctive organic extraction process, as such, there could not have been that degree of ethnic dominance in the leadership structure. He believed that many of the leaders at the time, did not go through the political and cultural milling process that Dr. Jagan did.
So, he was not surprised nor thought anything untoward about shape of the government. He felt that the socio-political status quo was a developing process and it should be given an opportunity to evolve; and with evolutionary exposure the ethnic leadership structure will become more balanced.
Finally, I recall when Dr. Jagan died, Mrs. Jagan reported that his last words to the family were, “everything will be all right.” Everywhere you go during that time; on the radio, in minibuses, from home entertainment speakers, even in deep Afro enclaves, the Bob Marley tune, Three Little Birds, rang out.
The part that said, “don’t worry about a thing ‘cause every little thing gonna be alright” became a national theme chorus. Then on the day of his cremation, as his funeral cortège moved from Freedom House through the streets of Georgetown, on to the East Coast Public Road all the way to Port Mourant, Corentyne, hundreds of thousands of Guyanese of every ethnicity lined the roadway to pay their last respects.
Dr. Jagan was loved throughout Guyana, and where love does not describe citizen’s emotions, respect was certainly an overwhelming sentiment towards him. Dr. Jagan’s legacy will be forever woven into the fabric of our society.