OPINION: The Jagdeo Doctrine of 2023

Last Updated on Sunday, 31 December 2023, 13:13 by Denis Chabrol

By Dr. Randy Persaud, Professor Emeritus

The world knows Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo as a brilliant economist. Even those who do not like his politics acknowledge that the General Secretary of the PPP, who is also the current Vice President, has mastered the intricacies of macro-economic management. Party supporters and even opposition elements also know him as a shrewd and fearless politician. This much is so true that many in the opposition hold a grudging admiration for the former president.

Yet, one of Jagdeo’s greatest assets, as well as his most emphatic commitment, has not received the attention it should have. This is his absolute and unshakable dedication to making Guyana a country free of a politics based on racism. More than just politics, Jagdeo has not and will never tolerate anyone, from any quarter, who seeks to divide this country on racial grounds. A Guyana free of racial animosity is Bharrat Jagdeo’s most sacred and non-negotiable ontological foundation. I know this!

At his Freedom House press conference last Thursday December 28, 2023, General Secretary Jagdeo made the following statement:

We will fight people with all of our strength, whichever quarters they come from, who seek to divide our people along ethnic lines and to reverse the progress that we have made and who tried to take away our freedom. These are non-negotiable. We have no apology for fighting these individuals who tried to mislead our nation into doing things or clouding people’s judgement so that they make wrong choices (Bharrat Jagdeo, December 28, 2023).

These are indeed fighting words but attempts to sew division among the Guyanese people based on ethnic or racial lines will aways produce the kind of response articulated here. What is important to note is that Jagdeo’s statement is not an automatic punchline, or an expression born of exasperation or circumstantial anger. Behind the words are well-thought-out ideas, principles, and commitments. Put differently, what Jagdeo presented on December 28, 2023, was a Doctrine, a Doctrine of Anti-Racism. It is a personal one for him, but simultaneously, a doctrine for the PPP.

You should recognize immediately that President Mohamed Irfaan Ali’s One Guyana is a grand narrative of anti-racism, of unity, of a consolidated national self.

One might suggest that the PPP has always had a commitment to anti-racism. This is true. What then is the specificity of Jagdeo’s contribution that makes it seminal? For me, the answer came at Babu John in 2023. There, in front of a packed, blazing red audience, in the brilliant Port Mourant sunshine, with the Atlantic wind behind him, the General Secretary did something extraordinary.

On that day, he stepped up to the microphone, looked far into the crowd, cleared his throat, and then without much style, simply, but poignantly, noted that the PPP had not in the past done enough to broaden the base of the PPP to sufficiently reflect the diversity of the country. Shockingly, the acknowledgement received neither praise nor criticism, either from friend or foe.

What Bharrat Jagdeo did, however, was to introduce a simple but seminal idea, namely, that to deepen democracy, the PPP must broaden its base. That public admission took an incredible amount of courage. With President Ali at his back in proximity, the first installment of what I see as the Jagdeo Doctrine was declared. And, at that moment, on that fateful day, the PPP began its transformation, and that of the country. Thus entered the Jagdeo Doctrine in the annals of this nation. The Local Government Elections of 2023 saw the Jagdeo Doctrine operationalized. (That political opening must be combined with the Freedom House statement to complete the Jagdeo Doctrine).

A doctrine is a coherent set of ideas, principles, norms, and expectations that frames the ways in which (in this case) a political party thinks about things, about its fundamental values and commitments, and about its core objectives, about its conduct, both public and private. The older PPP had powerful ideological commitments, most of it anchored in anti-colonialism and economic egalitarianism. The latter often took the language of socialism.

The Jagdeo Doctrine is partly in response to a new variant of political subversion. This strain is composed of an admixture of foreign and domestic social forces who use the global history of Black Oppression to disguise their own virulent strategy of racialized political mobilization. When they do this, they knowingly attempt to divide the people of Guyana into racial enclaves. Their intended objective is to take state power through a politics of racialization.

The core of the Jagdeo Doctrine is worth restating – We will fight people with all of our strength, whichever quarters they come from who seek to divide our people along ethnic lines and to reverse the progress that we have made and who tried to take away our freedom” (Bharrat Jagdeo, December 28, 2023).

Dr. Randy Persaud is Adviser on International Affairs, Office of the President, Guyana.