March 14, 2009, Kaieteur News, The West on Trial: New edition, by Freddie Kissoon,

March 14, 2009, Kaieteur News, The West on Trial: New edition, by Freddie Kissoon,

Among the viewpoints I have expressed since I started doing newspaper commentary is one that calls into question the account of Guyanese history in the fifties and sixties as seen by Dr. Cheddi Jagan in his famous autobiography, "The West on Trial."

This is a book of how a politician saw his life in those times. It is his subjective (not to deny his resort to many factual situations) evaluation of a huge range of events that comprise that period. It is a self-righteous interpretation and self-righteous condemnation of people and events that Dr. Jagan didn't like for a plethora of reasons. Facts got lost along the way.

In several columns of mine over the years I have warned young minds to accept "The West on Trial" as it should be – one man's opinion of others; nothing more, nothing less. The political rage of the sixties cries out for revisionist treatment. The emotions of the sixties have permanently displaced dispassionate investigation.
The seminal question to ask is: to what extent was Dr. Jagan (and the PPP) an unreasonable, obdurate, undemocratic player in the configuration? Research on this question has been drowned out by the persistence of the emotive domination – Dr. Jagan was overthrown by the CIA acting through the TUC, PNC and UF. What about any legitimate claims these actors might have had?

If one carefully studies the very nature of the PPP, the essence of its political culture, and what is has been doing for the past sixteen years in government since 1992, it will lead the inquiring mind into an iconoclastic interpretation of the sixties. What caused the tragedy in the sixties was the political culture of the PPP (apart from the realpolitk factors involved).

Look at the PPP in power today, and the echoes of the sixties are reverberating. Many times in these essays, I opined that if Cheddi Jagan was alive today, and he was to pen a new edition of "The West on Trial," the same subjective ranting will be there in which his fictions become the historical facts".

First, the private media (particularly the Stabroek News) would have been singled out as a collaborator against the PPP designed to weaken and remove the government. This is what Jagan did to the media in the sixties. This is what he would have done in 2009.

Read Mrs. Jagan's disagreement over the withdrawal of state advertisements from the Stabroek. Although she broke with Mr. Jagdeo on this policy, her essay on the topic was punctuated with severe castigations against the Stabroek for being anti-PPP. The truth is the Stabroek is not.

Dr. Jagan's new edition of his autobiography would have passed on that fiction to another generation, just as he transmitted an ocean of subjectivities to my generation. Look how uncanny is the resemblance between Mr. Jagdeo's denunciations of the private media and the same attitude of Dr. Jagan's in the sixties – a classic case of the longevity of political culture.

Secondly, the WPA, the GHRA, this writer, Mr. Christopher Ram, the Alliance for Change, and numerous organisations and civil society personalities would have been characterised and evaluated in Dr. Jagan's new edition as anti-PPP conspirators. No mention would have been made of the PPP's descent into corruption, authoritarianism and unadulterated incompetence.

The PPP in 2009 imposed Dr. James Rose, Kwame McCoy, the polygraph, FITUG and so many other unacceptable processes on the society, refusing to compromise. This is the PPP's political culture. None of these things would find space in the new version of "The West on Trial."

It is in this context one must see the mountain of faults in this autobiography.

Were there incidents like the ones connected to Rose, McCoy and similar episodes in the sixties, when Dr. Jagan was Premier and the stubborn, haughty PPP leaders refuse to listen to and accommodate its critics and the opposition? I believe the answer is yes. Assess the PPP today and graphically staring you in the eyes are the moments of the sixties.

The old myth that Cheddi Jagan was an innocent democrat that the CIA pulverized just because they didn't like his communist embrace should be exorcised from the memory of this nation. A new update of "The West on Trial" will continue the distortion of the country's history.

The other side of the tragedy of the sixties must be told. It is such a pity that Mr. "Kit" Nascimento does not seem willing to write a competing version to the "The West on Trial." Can someone talk to this man?