Cheddi Jagan

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Cheddi Berret Jagan

Cheddi Berret Jagan (* March 22, 1918 - March 6, 1997 ) was Prime Minister (1957–1964) and President (1992–1997) of Guyana .

The son of Indian immigrants and plantation workers , he graduated from Queen's College High School in Georgetown . He later studied at Howard Dental School in Washington, DC and Northwestern University in Chicago before returning to Guyana in 1943. Shocked by the conditions there, the oral surgeon founded the socialist-oriented People's Progressive Party (PPP) together with his future rival Forbes Burnham in 1950 . He was elected to the colonial legislature in 1947 and was the controversial leader of the Guyanese government in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Jagan won the colonial elections of 1953, but Britain sent troops because he was accused of ties to the Soviet Union . After 133 days in office, Jagan resigned as prime minister. Thereupon Great Britain suspended the constitution and appointed a transitional government. Jagan's freedom of movement was restricted to Georgetown from 1954 to 1957.

After his party's election victory, Jagan was again prime minister in 1961. He promoted the trade union movement, improved the education system and the infrastructure of the country. With this social reformist and anti-colonial policy, however, he incurred the disfavour of both the British and the North Americans. The CIA began to instill suspicion and unrest in the country. When the PPP nevertheless had the largest share of the vote in the December 1964 elections with 46 percent, the British governor unceremoniously commissioned Burnham to form a government, which eliminated Jagan. In Tim Weiner's CIA: The full story goes about this:

“On August 15, 1962, President Kennedy, [CIA Chief] McCone, and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy decided that it was time to bring this matter to a resolution. Kennedy initiated a $ 2 million campaign that eventually drove Jagan out of office. Kennedy later told British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan: Latin America was the most dangerous area in the world. If we had had a communist state in British Guyana, the immediate consequence would have been (...) that in the United States there would have been compelling pressure in the sense of a military strike against Cuba. "

In 1992 Jagan made a "comeback": he was elected President. However, he had meanwhile broken with all socialist orientations and campaigned for deregulation in the sense of a free market economy. Five years later, Jagan died of a heart attack in Washington, DC .

Jagan had been married to Janet Rosenberg since 1943 , a former member of a communist youth organization with whom he had two children. Janet Jagan followed in her husband's footsteps and took over the offices of Prime Minister and President in 1997. Corruption allegations were made against the daughter of the two PPP politicians, Nadira Jagan-Brancier. The son, Cheddi Jagan jun., Supports the current presidential candidate of the PPP.

A major political writer and speechwriter, Jagan also left behind several books, including Forbidden Freedom: The Story of British Guiana , The West On Trial: My Fight for Guyana's Freedom, and The USA in South America . In the capital, Georgetown, the ex-president has his own museum. In addition, the international airport of Guyana, located around 40 km south of the capital, bears Jagan's name.

literature

  • Colin A. Palmer: Cheddi Jagan and the Politics of Power: British Guiana's Struggle for Independence . The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2010
  • Cheddi B. Jagan , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 22/1997 from May 19, 1997, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ PPP website , accessed June 19, 2012
  2. ↑ Tim Weiner: CIA. The whole story , German edition Frankfurt / Main 2008, page 265. There you can also find out that Kennedy had assured in an interview with Izvestia in November 1961 that the USA supported the idea that every people should have the right to choose the form of government to choose who deem it right.
  3. ↑ Spiegel No. 11/1997 , accessed on June 19, 2012
  4. ↑ Save Guyana 2012 , accessed June 19, 2012
  5. ↑ 2011 event , accessed on June 19, 2012
  6. ↑ Some texts online , accessed on June 19, 2012
  7. ^ Book presentation by Peter D. Fraser, 2012 , accessed on June 19, 2012

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Jagan, Cheddi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jagan, Cheddi Berret
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Guyanese politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 22, 1918
DATE OF DEATH March 6, 1997