British Guiana: Cheddi Against the Field

The East Indian speakers at the rally could barely be heard above the din. Tough-looking Portuguese and Negro youths swaggered about the parade grounds in the Georgetown capital—heckling, booing and shouting obscenities. When the last East Indian speaker stepped up, the mob advanced to the platform, disconnecting the public address system and defying the outnumbered East Indians to do anything. Then the hecklers swarmed toward a car, nearly lynching an East Indian driver because someone shouted: “He’s got a gun.” The gun was a toy pistol.

Reason behind this and similar riots is that on Dec. 7, Britain’s tiny self-governing colony on South America’s northeast hump will elect a new government. The campaign pits Marxist Premier Cheddi Jagan and his 295,000 East Indian followers, who live mostly in the countryside, against an informal alliance of 330,000 violently anti-Jagan whites and Negroes, who control the towns and are led mainly by Georgetown Attorney Forbes Burnham, 41. Jagan has a real fight on his hands. In 1961 he got 42.6% of the vote. But under simple majority rule, he picked up enough districts to win 20 of Parliament’s 35 seats. This time, however, the British have decreed countrywide proportional representation—strongly hinting that London wants an opposition coalition in Parliament that will mix the races and bring Jagan down.

Campaign of “Ifs.” Cheddi’s first reaction to the new ground rules last fall was to threaten a boycott. When that failed to daunt the British, he sent his East Indian sugar workers out on a strike that swiftly degenerated into an ugly race war. Hundreds of Negro and East Indian homes were bombed, 173 people were killed, thousands more injured. Sporadic fighting went on for six months until British Governor Sir Richard Luyt assumed emergency power and called in 5,000 tommies. Only then did Jagan call off the strike and order his supporters to register.

His campaign has done little to calm the racial passions. His party circulated thousands of copies of a preliminary police report on the activities of Negro counterterrorist groups during the strike. When Luyt banned the report on the grounds that it was secret and full of unverified accusations, a so-called Jagan “government commission” put out its own juicy report on Negro violence. Then there is the question of lagan’s Marxism: Cheddi has long railed at the “imperialist” U.S., while lauding Fidel Castro, trading with

Cuba, and calling for Cuban-style “socialism” in British Guiana. Yet he insists that “my party is not a Communist party.” Is Cheddi himself a Communist? “If you mean to each his own,” he says, “then I am a Communist. But if you mean denial of freedom, then I am not.” Chance for a Coalition. Cheddi’s chief opponent, Negro Leader Forbes Burnham, considers this pure doubletalk. A graduate of London University, Burnham is an able, experienced politician who would strengthen the colony’s ties with the U.S. Chances are that Jagan will win the most votes, but not the 51% majority he needs to form a government. In second place will come Burnham, and third, the United Force Party, led by Portuguese Businessman Peter d’Aguiar. Anti-Jaganites then hope that these two will stitch together a ruling coalition, allowing British Guiana to recover, with Western help. “Jagan,” says Burnham, “has antagonized the West as far as assistance is concerned, and failed to get assistance from the East.”