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Guyana The Development of Political Parties
The immediate postwar period witnessed the founding of Guyana's
major political parties, the People's Progressive Party (PPP) and
the People's National Congress (PNC). These years also saw the
beginning of a long and acrimonious struggle between the country's
two dominant political personalities--Cheddi Jagan and Linden
Forbes Burnham.
The end of World War II began a period of worldwide
decolonization. In British Guiana, political awareness and demands
for independence grew in all segments of society. At the same time,
the struggle for political ascendancy between Burnham, the ""Man on
Horseback"" of the Afro-Guyanese, and Jagan, the hero of the
Indo-Guyanese masses, left a legacy of racially polarized politics
that remained in place in the 1990s.
Jagan had been born in Guyana in 1918. His parents were
immigrants from India. His father was a driver, a position
considered to be on the lowest rung of the middle stratum of
Guianese society. Jagan's childhood gave him a lasting insight into
rural poverty. Despite their poor background, the senior Jagan sent
his son to Queen's College in Georgetown. After his education
there, Jagan went to the United States to study dentistry,
graduating from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois in
1942.
Jagan returned to British Guiana in October 1943 and was soon
joined by his American wife, the former Janet Rosenberg, who was to
play a significant role in her new country's political development.
Although Jagan established his own dentistry clinic, he was soon
enmeshed in politics. After a number of unsuccessful forays into
Guiana's political life, Jagan became treasurer of the Manpower
Citizens Association (MPCA) in 1945. The MPCA represented the
colony's sugar workers, many of whom were Indo- Guyanese. Jagan's
tenure was brief, as he clashed repeatedly with the more moderate
union leadership over policy issues. Despite his departure from the
MPCA a year after joining, the position allowed Jagan to meet other
union leaders in British Guiana and throughout the English-speaking
Caribbean.
The springboard for Jagan's political career was the Political
Affairs Committee (PAC), formed in 1946 as a discussion group. The
new organization published the PAC Bulletin to promote its
Marxist ideology and ideas of liberation and decolonization. The
PAC's outspoken criticism of the colony's poor living standards
attracted followers as well as detractors.
In the November 1947 general elections, the PAC put forward
several members as independent candidates. The PAC's major
competitor was the newly formed Labour Party, which, under J.B.
Singh, won six of fourteen seats contested. Jagan won a seat and
briefly joined the Labour Party. But he had difficulties with his
new party's center-right ideology and soon left its ranks. The
Labour Party's support of the policies of the British governor and
its inability to create a grass-roots base gradually stripped it of
liberal supporters throughout the country. The Labour Party's lack
of a clear-cut reform agenda left a vacuum, which Jagan rapidly
moved to fill. Turmoil on the colony's sugar plantations gave him
an opportunity to achieve national standing. After the June 16,
1948 police shootings of five Indo-Guyanese workers at Enmore,
close to Georgetown, the PAC and the Guiana Industrial Workers
Union (GIWU) organized a large and peaceful demonstration, which
clearly enhanced Jagan's standing with the Indo-Guyanese
population.
Jagan's next major step was the founding of the People's
Progressive Party (PPP) in January 1950. Using the PAC as a
foundation, Jagan created from it a new party that drew support
from both the Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese communities. To
increase support among the Afro-Guyanese, Forbes Burnham was
brought into the party.
Born in 1923, Burnham was the sole son in a family that had
three children. His father was headmaster of Kitty Methodist
Primary School, which was located just outside Georgetown. As part
of the colony's educated class, young Burnham was exposed to
political viewpoints at an early age. He did exceedingly well in
school and went to London to obtain a law degree. Although not
exposed to childhood poverty as was Jagan, Burnham was acutely
aware of racial discrimination.
The social strata of the urban Afro-Guyanese community of the
1930s and 1940s included a mulatto or ""coloured"" elite, a black
professional middle class, and, at the bottom, the black working
class. Unemployment in the 1930s was high. When war broke out in
1939, many Afro-Guyanese joined the military, hoping to gain new
job skills and escape poverty. When they returned home from the
war, however, jobs were still scarce and discrimination was still
a part of life. By the time of Burnham's arrival on the political
stage in the late 1940s, the Afro-Guyanese community was ready for
a leader.
The PPP's initial leadership was multiethnic and left of
center, but hardly revolutionary. Jagan became the leader of the
PPP's parliamentary group, and Burnham assumed the responsibilities
of party chairman. Other key party members included Janet Jagan and
Ashton Chase, both PAC veterans. The new party's first victory came
in the 1950 municipal elections, in which Janet Jagan won a seat.
Cheddi Jagan and Burnham failed to win seats, but Burnham's
campaign made a favorable impression on many urban Afro- Guyanese.
From its first victory in the 1950 municipal election, the PPP
gathered momentum. However, the party's often strident
anticapitalist and socialist message made the British government
uneasy. Colonial officials showed their displeasure with the PPP in
1952 when, on a regional tour, the Jagans were designated
prohibited immigrants in Trinidad and Grenada.
A British commission in 1950 recommended universal adult
suffrage and the adoption of a ministerial system for British
Guiana. The commission also recommended that power be concentrated
in the executive branch, that is, the office of the governor. These
reforms presented British Guiana's parties with an opportunity to
participate in national elections and form a government, but
maintained power in the hands of the British- appointed chief
executive. This arrangement rankled the PPP, which saw it as an
attempt to curtail the party's political power.
Data as of January 1992
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