Word: jagan
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...regular session on the eve of the former British colony's tenth anniversary of independence, the Speaker then interrupted a droning debate about a pension scheme, with a notable announcement: after a three-year boycott, the opposition People's Progressive Party, led by dedicated Marxist Cheddi Jagan, had agreed to take its seats in Parliament. The return of the opposition did not mean that Jagan, who misruled Guyana into economic chaos during the early 1960s, had mellowed. In fact, Jagan noted that Prime Minister Forbes Burnham, his political archrival and head of the governing People's National...
...that point, Jagan was surely right. Under Burnham, the Guyana government has shifted markedly to the left, most visibly in cultivating relations with Jagan's idol, Cuban Premier Fidel Castro. Washington, which lavished millions on Guyana in development projects to encourage Burnham's election in 1964, is upset. So are neighboring Venezuela and Brazil. Outsiders' suspicion has provoked a kind of fortress mentality on the part of Burnham, who optimistically called Jagan's return to Parliament "a warning to our enemies that we are a united people...
...Bauxite Co. Declaring that "I was always a socialist," Burnham has said that he hopes to establish not a Marxist state but a "cooperative republic"; so far, however, a network of small farming, marketing and labor cooperatives involves only a fraction of Guyanese society. Last week, as Opposition Leader Jagan noted with satisfaction, the government announced the nationalization of the British-owned Bookers Sugar Co., which controls about 40% of the country's economy...
...external threat-real or imagined-to the Burnham regime is the narrow, racially divided base upon which his "cooperative republic" tries to stand. Burnham consolidated his power through elections that were gimmicked in favor of the 40% of Guyana's 800,000 population who are black; Marxist Jagan and his P.P.P. draw much of their strength from the resentments of the 52% that is East Indian (the remainder are native peoples, known locally as Amerindians). The black P.N.C. retains a relative monopoly on patronage, and the laboring Indian majority believes Burnham's socialism to be a means...
...what a flag ought to be, Smith points to that of Guyana: a boldly simple design with a red triangle and a gold arrowhead on a green field. It just happens that the banner was designed by Smith himself. "I wrote to [Guyana's former Prime Minister] Cheddi Jagan, as I always do to leaders of newly independent countries, and sent in a design," he recalls. "Nothing was heard for a while until finally a Guyanese flag arrived in the mail, and I said, 'My God, that's my flag...