I find it sad that we can now expect that every March, the leadership of the PPP will use the Babu John ceremony as an occasion to ‘cuss out’ their political opponents and the media. I am actually hoping that they don’t care that this in no way honours Dr Jagan.
Whenever I visit the Botanical Gardens, I see again reason to despair that we will never mature politically as a nation. A mature nation would by now have memorialized Dr Jagan at the area of the Seven Ponds. Members of the two main political parties can delude themselves otherwise, but Burnham and Jagan were both politicians to the core, and had a deep need for power. They both exploited the realities of the racial composition of our electorate for their own political gains. They both had warts, perhaps different ones, but they both had them.
Burnham and Jagan were also patriots, and apparently not in it mainly for financial gain.
We as a nation, therefore, led by the government of the day, would be doing ourselves a great favour if we elevate both Jagan and Burnham above the present-day fray. We will never all agree that either or any of them is a true hero, but that is somewhat beside the point. What is necessary is that we free these men to rest in peace and we can study and debate their legacies all we want. We refuse to mature so we continue to have Jagan and Burnham like millstones around the neck of our national psyche. In this era, Jagan will be deified at the Red House and the Bel Air Heritage House whilst Burnham is barely mentioned in official places, and then mostly with barely concealed scorn.
When this era passes, perhaps the reverse will take place. What a cycle to have to exist in as a nation!
Jagan and Burnham are both dead, they died a long time ago. We honour them by letting them rest in peace. We honour them by learning from their achievements and their failures. We honour them by moving on. Guyana, it is time we grow up.
Yours faithfully,
Tony Charles
