Jagan’s brand of ‘communism’ was fundamentally different from what was practised in the Soviet Union

Dear Editor, I am not in the habit of responding to letters in the media but after reading Mr Tacuma Ogunseye’s letter (‘The PPP is not the first political party in Guyana’ Stabroek News, June 8) I felt obligated to provide some clarification on a few observations made by him.

Firstly, I did not state in my letter that the PPP is the oldest political party in Guyana. There was, as he quite correctly observed, the Labour Party of the 1930s which by the late 1950s had lost much of its militancy and appeal due mainly to the opportunism of several of its leaders. That party had won six of the fourteen seats in the Legislative Assembly but on most issues it sided with the planter-dominated legislature. As Dr Jagan noted in his book The West on Trial the party was Labour only in name.

The PPP of the 1950s represented the most broad-based and labour-oriented party that emerged during the colonial era and which has survived until today. This obviously makes the party the oldest and, I wish to add, the largest political party today, despite the several attempts to split the PPP and emasculate its leadership.

I stand by my views that both the British and the United States administrations miscalculated in their assessment and categorization of Dr Jagan and the PPP during the 1960s when they engineered the removal of the PPP from political office. And while there was no doubt regarding Dr Jagan’s leftist and “communist” leanings, the fact remained that the PPP at no time, whether in or out of office, ever advocated a Soviet-model of political or economic development. In fact, the party had always embraced political and ideological pluralism, multi-party democracy, a tri-sectoral economy with a dominant role for the private sector which was deemed by Dr Jagan as the “engine of growth”.

Dr Jagan’s brand of “communism” was fundamentally different from what was practised in the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries. It took into account the peculiar political and cultural realities of Guyana and the wider Caribbean with one overarching objective, namely, to create a socially just society buttressed by free and fair multi-party elections, good governance and the rule of law. Yours faithfully, Hydar Ally