For all the Cheddie Jagan haters and Forbes Burnham worshipers the following excerpt from an interview with Trinidadian Lloyd Best is taken from Frank Birbalsingh’s book The People’s Progressive Party of Guyana 1950 – 1992: An Oral History (pages 89 and 90). Best’s bio below is also taken from the book. In 1962 Best was appointed by the United Nations as economic adviser to Dr. Cheddi Jagan's Government.


Frank Birbalsingh: Do we conclude that he (Cheddi Jagan) was naive and foolish in trusting the Americans, or do we say that he had a certain integrity about him?
Lloyd Best: When I wrote his obituary I said he was brahminic. He was almost priestly in his dedication. He was not like [Forbes] Burnham who was in politics for women and money and all that. That was what Burnham wanted: power to do all the things he couldn't do before. Cheddi was completely committed to the cause. He was abstemious. He was moderate with people. He believed in something.

Frank Birbalsingh: Surely he showed some flexibility, though, in gestures towards the American to allay their fears about his dogmatism?
Lloyd Best: Not on the things that mattered. Sir Jock Campbell, Chairman of Bookers, wanted to work with Cheddi, but Cheddi wouldn't give him an opportunity. He was flexible on the wrong things. He needed to make a concession to Bookers, one that didn't involve anything substantive in terms of money and so on. But he couldn't think of anything at all that would compel them to come into his camp. They didn't like Burnham, but they couldn't go with Cheddi either because he was so dogmatic.

Frank Birbalsingh: Were there efforts to break down this dogmatism from within his [Cheddie Jagan's] party [PPP]?
Lloyd Best: Let me tell you, I think Janet [Jagan] was a very bad influence on Cheddi.

Frank Birbalsingh: Why?
Lloyd Best: Because I don’t think she had any insight into the complexity of the Guyana situation, and she was the biggest buttress of Cheddi’s intransigence in Guyana. She was very hostile to dissent. In my judgment she was a person who believed if you were not for me, then you were against me.

Frank Birbalsingh: She had the Cold War mentality?
Lloyd Best: That’s the one thing Cheddi did not need. Burnham was so skilled. You knew he was a rogue, but you still had to like him because he could joke, drink, and be a hale fellow well met. He was easy to live with, but completely crooked.

Frank Birbalsingh: Was Burnham lazy?
Lloyd Best: He didn’t prepare. He thought that he could get up on the spur of the moment and speak on anything and persuade everybody. It wasn’t laziness; it was arrogance. He would tell people things he himself did not believe.

Frank Birbalsingh: It is interesting though that whether he was twisted or not, Burnham’s party ruled Guyana for twenty eight years, while his rival who was regarded as a good man, even if naive or dogmatic, was completely sidelined. How do you account for that? When people write off this region as a dark, Naipaulian place, it is because a man like Burnham can prosper in it, and Anansi values such as superficiality, glibness, crookedness and successful cunning are respected.
Lloyd Best: It happens everywhere. [Basdeo] Panday is not very different from [Eric] Williams, nor [Norman] Manley. All of them are “ginals” or tricksters. It is only that the polarisation in Trinidad was not as extreme as in Guyana, and Burnham had an extra yen to prevail. I have never known a man more ambitious than Burnham. It started before he entered politics in Guyana. As a student in London, Burnham used all the money of the West Indian Students’ Union for himself. He went o Yugoslavia and had a great time, and when it ran out he sent for more.


BIO: Lloyd Best was born in Trinidad in 1934 and attended Queen’s Royal College, the Government Boys’ school. He won a Trinidad island scholarship that took him to Cambridge University. After his first degree, he moved to Oxford University for graduate research before taking up a post as Lecturer in Economics at the University of the West Indies Mona, Jamaica, in 1957. But, after only a few years, Best returned to his home island and in 1968 founded Tapia House Group, a ground-breaking intellectual and political movement that flourished in the 1970s, before it was transformed into the Trinidad and Tobago Institute of the West Indies with Best as its Director. At the same time, Best founded the Trinidad and Tobago Review on which he served as Managing Editor and Publisher for many years. Not only was he a founder of yet another journal, New World Quarterly, but he also carried out assignments for the UN and other agencies, and acted as keynote speaker at numerous conferences. Best’s extraordinary activity as a prolific journalist, newspaper columnist and public speaker, economist, political scientist and philosopher evidently established him as one of the major intellectual figures in the post-colonial Caribbean.

According to Best, Burnham was a crook since in his student days. Burnham used all the money of the West Indian Students’ Union for himself. He went o Yugoslavia and had a great time, and when it ran out he sent for more.

quote:

Originally posted by SJ4321:
According to Best, Burnham was a crook since in his student days. Burnham used all the money of the West Indian Students’ Union for himself. He went o Yugoslavia and had a great time, and when it ran out he sent for more.

Did he become Tito' buddy.
The more I read about Burnham the more I get to respect the old reprobate, did he get more money

And when he became PM of Guyana you know where the money went.

quote:

Originally posted by SJ4321:
For all the Cheddie Jagan haters and Forbes Burnham worshipers the following excerpt from an interview with Trinidadian Lloyd Best is .

Best is a communist. Who cares what he thinks.

I also suggest that you go to that website and note comments made about Indians. Where do you think Eric gets his info from?

I have no doubt that Burnham was crooked. Man, if you can steal people's right to vote, then you can steal anything from people. And Burnham was a thief!

But why is it that Shirt Jac would have us focus onBurnham being a crook when the interviwee made some devastating charges against both Cheddi and his wife Janet?

1. Frank Birbalsingh: Surely he showed some flexibility, though, in gestures towards the American to allay their fears about his dogmatism?

Lloyd Best: Not on the things that mattered. He was flexible on the wrong things. He needed to make a concession to Bookers, one that didn't involve anything substantive in terms of money and so on. But he couldn't think of anything at all that would compel them to come into his camp. They didn't like Burnham, but they couldn't go with Cheddi either because he was so dogmatic.

2. Frank Birbalsingh: Were there efforts to break down this dogmatism from within his [Cheddie Jagan's] party [PPP]?

Lloyd Best: Let me tell you, I think Janet [Jagan] was a very bad influence on Cheddi.

Frank Birbalsingh: Why?

Lloyd Best: Because I don’t think she had any insight into the complexity of the Guyana situation, and she was the biggest buttress of Cheddi’s intransigence in Guyana. She was very hostile to dissent. In my judgment she was a person who believed if you were not for me, then you were against me.

Frank Birbalsingh: She had the Cold War mentality?

Lloyd Best: That’s the one thing Cheddi did not need. Burnham was so skilled. You knew he was a rogue, but you still had to like him because he could joke, drink, and be a hale fellow well met. He was easy to live with, but completely crooked.


CONCLUSION: Janet Jagan is the reason why Cheddi Jagan wound up a loser for 28 years! She really was a bad influence on him and she is a bad influence on Jagdeo and the PPP. She is no good for Guyana. She is the reason why Westerners are not flocking to invest heavily in Guyana despite Guyana's enormous potential to do better! She is Guyana's Albatross!

An outsider has seen the woman for what she is: NO GOOD FOR GUYANA! I have been saying the same darn thing for the longest while but some apologists think I hate the woman. Here is a foreigner who is saying the same thing, but he doesn't hate her!

Go home! Go home! Go home! Go home! Go home Janet Rosenberg!

Guyana doesn't need your communist dogma. Guyana doesn't need a white American siding with one ethnic group against another ethnic group for partisan and petty gain.

Ole Haig is the Downfall of Cheddi Jagan, PPP and Guyana....

Guyana will be safer when the Bloodsucker is gone.......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI6VyjBPMsM

I doan know whah kinda crack Best is smokin but Cheddi was absolutely ruthless with his Indian opposition. He destroyed every single Indian leader who posed even a mere threat to his fiefdom over coolies.

He consistently purged the PPP of all coolie dissent. And destroyed all other Indian organizations in opposition to him and his low class coterie of sycophants. The man brooked no internal (i.e. coolie) opposition.

As the saying goes... (correct my guyanism here if necessary) but....Smart fuh coolie man. Schupid fuh blackman.

quote:

Originally posted by JoKer:
I doan know whah kinda crack Best is smokin but Cheddi was absolutely ruthless with his Indian opposition. He destroyed every single Indian leader who posed even a mere threat to his fiefdom over coolies.

He consistently purged the PPP of all coolie dissent. And destroyed all other Indian organizations in opposition to him and his low class coterie of sycophants. The man brooked no internal (i.e. coolie) opposition.

As the saying goes... (correct my guyanism here if necessary) but....Smart fuh coolie man. Schupid fuh blackman.

I don't think that as UN appointed economic advisor to Cheddi that Best would have known the inner workings of the PPP, only what decisions the government made.

That he could have described Janet Jagan the way he did is very telling though.

Shoots! Dem PPP boys holding on like hell on a piece of straw!

quote:

Lloyd Best: Because I don’t think she had any insight into the complexity of the Guyana situation, and she was the biggest buttress of Cheddi’s intransigence in Guyana. She was very hostile to dissent. In my judgment she was a person who believed if you were not for me, then you were against me.

Them PPPites quiet like church mice.
No response.

quote:

Originally posted by caribj:

quote:

Originally posted by SJ4321:
For all the Cheddie Jagan haters and Forbes Burnham worshipers the following excerpt from an interview with Trinidadian Lloyd Best is .

Best is a communist. Who cares what he thinks.

I also suggest that you go to that website and note comments made about Indians. Where do you think Eric gets his info from?

Eric gets his info from his own observations and reading out of print books, and by the way the only person I know in T&T that voted for Best's "Tapia" house party is my mom back in the 70's.(her PNM sister-in-law detested her for that) a "Tapia" house is a house built back in the day with mud and grass sticks etc. and you're right nobody in T&T took Prof Best seriously because of his communist leanings.

Interestingly enough Best once attended a "Jagan lecture" at York University in Toronto also called the "Jewish University" (very true indeed once had a run in with a hostile kike official in that very school back in the early 90's, if looks could kill I'd been dead for sure and I've heard similar stories from other Afro students about hostile Jewish students)

anyway Prof Best came and said some flattering things about Jagan with a large audience of Indo guyanese etc next week while looking at the front page of the "Indo Caribbean World" a guyanese "ethnic newspaper" (read PPP) with Best on the front page with two beaming indian women at his side etc but turn to the letters section and was a letter from an Indian guyanese fella complaining about "I don't want to see that blackman there again".

That "newspaper" agenda seems to be nothing more than complaining about Eric Williams comparing him to Burnham posting articles that calls afro trinis illegals from other islands and not real trinis etc the usual nonsense of re-writting other ppl's history.