Ethnicity and Politics in Guyana

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
What’s the answer to this trivia question: “Which Jewish woman other than Israel’s Golda Meir has ever governed a country?” It’s Guyana’s Janet Jagan.

 Janet Rosenberg Jagan was a Chicago-born socialist politician who from 1997 to 1999 was president of Guyana, a republic on the northern coast of South America whose 795,000 people are mostly the descendants of African slaves and South Asian indentured labourers. How then did this come about?

Guyana, the former British Guiana, gained its independence from Great Britain in 1966. Its national motto is “One People, One Nation, One Destiny.” Rarely has a slogan reflected reality less.

Guyana is one of only three entities on the continent which are not Spanish or Portuguese. To its east is Suriname, the former Dutch Guiana, and further east is French Guiana, still under French sovereignty. The three Guianas are, in ethnicity, language and orientation, more part of the Caribbean than mainland South America.

Indo-Guyanese (or East Indians) constitute about 43 per cent of Guyana’s total population, followed by Afro-Guyanese at 30 per cent. People of mixed heritage are at 16 per cent and Amerindians (native American tribes) make up nine per cent. Most Indo-Guyanese practice Hinduism or Islam, while Blacks are mainly Christian.

In such societies, ethnic divisions easily become the basis for political cleavages. Tensions periodically have boiled over between the two main groups, which back ethnically based political parties and vote along ethnic lines.

The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) has been largely pro-Indian since the mid-1950s, while the People’s National Congress (PNC) has been mainly Afro-Guyanese.

The PNC managed to gain power for much of the period since independence even though its Afro-Guyanese supporters were numerically inferior to the other large bloc, the East Indians. This was due to the fact that it managed to obtain support from the mixed population, which is culturally similar to the Afro-Guyanese, and from the Amerindians.

The PPP was formed in 1950 by Dr. Cheddi Jagan, an Indo-Guyanese, and his American-born wife Janet.  It was socialist and at first genuinely multi-ethnic. One of the founders of the new party was a London-trained Afro-Guyanese, Forbes Burnham.

The PPP would prove too radical for the British, who still governed the colony; they suspected it of links with Communists. In 1955, the PPP split, and Burnham and his faction created the mainly Black PNC. Both parties became vehicles for the rival ethnic groups. The pro-PPP Hindi slogan “apan jaht” (vote for your own kind) became true for the whole society.

Washington, too, worried that Jagan was too left-wing and in 1961 President John Kennedy ordered the CIA to covertly finance a campaign of labour unrest and sabotage that led to race riots.

As independence drew near, London drafted a new constitution with a proportional representation electoral system favourable to the PNC. In the last pre-independence election in1964, a PNC coalition took office, and Burnham became prime minster. It was this government that led the country to independence two years later.

Back then as an aspiring journalist, I remember meeting and interviewing Cheddi Jagan in the autumn of 1965 when I was a student at McGill University. He was visiting Montreal and spoke at the university trying to make the case that he had been railroaded out of office as London was preparing to grant British Guiana independence.

Rigged elections would follow one after another after independence, as Burnham and his cronies – now calling themselves “socialists -- remained in power, driving the economy into the ground. A new constitution became law in 1980 and Burnham declared himself executive president. When he died in 1985, Guyana was the poorest nation in the western hemisphere.

His successor Desmond Hoyte began to revive the economy by courting foreign capitalists and privatizing many nationalized industries. He also opened up the political system to genuine competition.

In the October 1992 elections, Cheddi Jagan’s People’s Progressive Party/Civic led a four-party coalition to victory against the ruling PNC. Despite his Marxist philosophy, Jagan promised to continue the free market economic reforms.

Jagan would serve as president until his death five years later. His wife Janet held the post until 1999, when she retired due to ill health; she died in 2009. The Jagans had married in Chicago in 1943, while Janet was a nursing student at Cook County Hospital, Cheddi a dental student at Northwestern University, and both already involved in radical politics.

Since 1992 the PPP/Civic has won five straight victories. Guyana’s current president, Donald Ramotar, an economist by training, has been in office since 2011, succeeding Bharrat Jagdeo. He has pledged to continue his predecessors’ policies, with their emphasis on improving social conditions and government services, especially in the fields of housing, education, health and energy security.

Guyana has experienced positive growth almost every year over the past decade. But it continues to suffer from widespread government corruption and the fragile protection of property rights under the weak rule of law.