|
Guyana The Second PPP Government, 1957-61, and Racial Politics
The 1957 elections held under a new constitution demonstrated
the extent of the growing ethnic division within the Guianese
electorate. The revised constitution provided limited selfgovernment , primarily through the Legislative Council. Of the
council's twenty-four delegates, fifteen were elected, six were
nominated, and the remaining three were to be ex officio members
from the interim administration. The two wings of the PPP launched
vigorous campaigns, each attempting to prove that it was the
legitimate heir to the original party. Despite denials of such
motivation, both factions made a strong appeal to their respective
ethnic constituencies.
The 1957 elections were convincingly won by Jagan's PPP
faction. Although his group had a secure parliamentary majority,
its support was drawn more and more from the Indo-Guyanese
community. The faction's main planks were increasingly identified
as Indo- Guyanese: more rice land, improved union representation in
the sugar industry, and improved business opportunities and more
government posts for Indo-Guyanese. The PPP had abrogated its claim
to being a multiracial party.
Jagan's veto of British Guiana's participation in the West
Indies Federation resulted in the complete loss of Afro-Guyanese
support. In the late 1950s, the British Caribbean colonies had been
actively negotiating establishment of a West Indies Federation. The
PPP had pledged to work for the eventual political union of British
Guiana with the Caribbean territories. The Indo-Guyanese, who
constituted a majority in Guyana, were apprehensive of becoming
part of a federation in which they would be outnumbered by people
of African descent. Jagan's veto of the federation caused his party
to lose all significant Afro-Guyanese support.
Burnham learned an important lesson from the 1957 elections. He
could not win if supported only by the lower-class, urban AfroGuyanese . He needed middle-class allies, especially those AfroGuyanese who backed the moderate United Democratic Party. From 1957
onward, Burnham worked to create a balance between maintaining the
backing of the more radical Afro-Guyanese lower classes and gaining
the support of the more capitalist middle class. Clearly, Burnham's
stated preference for socialism would not bind those two groups
together against Jagan, an avowed Marxist. The answer was something
more basic--race. Burnham's appeals to race proved highly
successful in bridging the schism that divided the Afro-Guyanese
along class lines. This strategy convinced the powerful
Afro-Guyanese middle class to accept a leader who was more of a
radical than they would have preferred to support. At the same
time, it neutralized the objections of the black working class to
entering an alliance with those representing the more moderate
interests of the middle classes. Burnham's move toward the right
was accomplished with the merger of his PPP faction and the United
Democratic Party into a new organization, the People's National
Congress (PNC).
Following the 1957 elections, Jagan rapidly consolidated his
hold on the Indo-Guyanese community. Though candid in expressing
his admiration for Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, and, later, Fidel
Castro Ruz, Jagan in power asserted that the PPP's MarxistLeninist principles must be adapted to Guyana's own particular
circumstances. Jagan advocated nationalization of foreign holdings,
especially in the sugar industry. British fears of a communist
takeover, however, caused the British governor to hold Jagan's more
radical policy initiatives in check.
Data as of January 1992
|
